THE STORY OF 

OURARMY 

FOR. 

YOUNG AMERICANS 



^^-^ WILLIS J. ABBOT 



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THE STORY OF 

OUR ARMY 

FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 

From Colonial Days to the 
Present Time 

BY 

WILLIS JOHN ABBOT 

Author of "The Blue Jacket Series," "The Battlefield Series," 
"The Story of Our Navy," "Panama and the Canal," etc. 

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1914 



Copyright, 1914, by 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

Published, 1914 



OCT I 1914 

Oci,A;i79S27 



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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Beginnings of Revolution — Lexington and Concord — The 
British Beleaguered in Boston — The Battle of Bunker Hill . i 



CHAPTER n 

Creation of the Army — Siege of Boston — Taking of Ticon- 
deroga — Expedition Against Quebec — The British Evacuate 
Boston 26 



CHAPTER HI 

The New York Campaign — Operations in New Jersey — Battles 
of Trenton and Princeton — Creation of a Regular Army . 53 



CHAPTER IV 

Character of General Burgoyne — His Expedition into New 
York — Capture of Ticonderoga — Battle of Bennington — 
Battle of Oriskany — Surrender of the British at Saratoga . 71 



CHAPTER V 

Howe Moves to Philadelphia — Washington's Defence of that 
City — Battles of the Brandywine and Germantown — Battle 
of Fort Mifflin — The Winter at Valley Forge — Clinton's 
Retreat 92 



CHAPTER VI 

The Wyoming Massacre — Services of George Rogers Clark — 
The War in the South — The French at Savannah — Defeat at 
Camden — The Victory at King's Mountain 124 



CHAPTER VII 

The Taking of Stony Point and Paulus Hook — The Treason of 
Arnold and the Execution of Andre 154 

Y 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER Vin 

PAGE 

The Battle of the Covvpens — Cornwallis Retires to Virginia — 
Lafayette's Pertinacious Pursuit — Approach of the French 
Fleet — The Surrender at Yorktown — The Continental Army 
Disbanded 172 

CHAPTER IX 

The War of 1812 — Lack of Military Resources — Reverses on the 
Canadian Border — Battle of Queenstown — Cockburn on the 
Chesapeake — The Capture of Washington — Battle of New 
Orleans — The Treaty of Ghent 194 

CHAPTER X 

The War with Mexico — Strengthening the Regular Army — 
General Taylor in Mexico — Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca 
de la Palma — General Scott's Invasion — Capture of the City 
of Mexico 241 

CHAPTER XI 

The War Between the States — The Right to Secede — Eleven 
States Leave the Union — Who Owned National Property? — 
Anderson at Fort Sumter — Virginia Invaded — Death of Ells- 
worth 283 

CHAPTER XII 

" On to Richmond " — The Army Advances into Virginia — The 
Problem Confronting General McDowell — Patterson and 
Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley — The Battle of Bull Run 
— Jackson Wins the Title " Stonewall " — Defeat of the Union 
Army — Panic in Washington 302 

CHAPTER XIII 

The War in the West — Lyon's Fight for Missouri and His 
Death — Grant First Appears — His Capture of Forts Henry 
and Donelson — Encouragement to the Union Cause . . 318 



CHAPTER XIV 

The War in the East — Operations by Sea and the Capture of 
New Orleans— Battle of Ball's Bluff— General McClellan in 
Command of the Army of the Potomac — Opening of the 
Peninsular Campaign — Battle of Seven Pines .... 336 



CONTENTS vli 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XV 

Jackson's Shenandoah Campaign — The Seven Days Before Rich- 
mond—Battle of Mechanicsville— Battle of Malvern Hill- 
Withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac 356 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Campaign of Shiloh — The Army and Navy Invest New 
Madrid and Island No. 10 — Grant's Army Advances to Pitts- 
burg Landing — Battle of Shiloh — Far Reaching Consequences 
of the Confederate Reverse 379 



CHAPTER XVII 

Halleck Appointed General-in-Chief — Army of the Potomac 
Recalled from the Peninsula — The Army of Virginia Moves 
on Richmond — General Pope in Command — Lee Strikes Hard 
— Pope Beaten at Second Bull Run — Richmond Campaign 
Abandoned 389 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Lee Invades Maryland — Harper's Ferry Recaptured — Fred- 
erick Entered — Battle of South Mountain — Battle of An- 
tietara ... 404 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Confederates Invade Kentucky — Louisville and Cincinnati 
Menaced — Buell's Stand at Perryville — Van Dorn Repulsed 
at Corinth — Bragg and Rosecrans Clash at Murfreesboro . 418 



CHAPTER XX 

McClellan Relieved of Command, Burnside Succeeds Him — The 
Battle of Fredericksburg — Slaughter on Marye's Heights — 
Burnside Deposed and Hooker Appointed — The Battles of 
Chancellorsville and the Wilderness 438 



CHAPTER XXI 

Lee's Invasion of Pennsylvania — Retirement of Hooker — Meade 
in Command of the Army of the Potomac — The Battle of 
Gettysburg — Pickett's Famous Charge — Lee Retreats to Vir- 
ginia 470 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXII 

PAGE 

Opening the Mississippi — Vicksburg Bars the Way — Grant's 
Campaign Against Pemberton — The Siege and Fall of Vicks- 
burg — Its Efifect : North and South 501 

CHAPTER XXIII 

The Chickamauga Campaign — Bragg Driven from Chattanooga 
— His Attack on Rosecrans — Battle of Chickamauga — Grant 
in Command — Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary 
Ridge 516 

CHAPTER XXIV 

Minor Operations East and West — Gillmore at Charleston — 
Sherman at Meridian — The Massacre of Fort Pillow — The 
Red River Campaign — Colonel Bailey's Dam .... 534 

CHAPTER XXV 

Grant Called to Chief Command — The Wilderness Again — Gen- 
eral Longstreet Wounded — Battle of Spottsylvania Court- 
House — Battle of Cold Harbor — Death of General " Jeb " 
Stuart 547 



CHAPTER XXVI 

The War in the West — Sherman's Advance on Atlanta — Fabian 
Tactics of General Johnston — Hood Commands the Confed- 
erates — His Disastrous Gallantry — The Fall of Atlanta . 571 



CHAPTER XXVII 

In the Shenandoah Valley — Boy Soldiers at New Market — 
Early's Raid on Washington — Peril of the National Capital 
— Sheridan in the Valley — Battle of Winchester — Sheridan's 
Ride 587 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Grant Moves to the South Side of the James — The Siege of 
Petersburg — The Failure of the Mine — Widespread Union 
Successes — Lee's Attack on Fort Stedman 605 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER XXIX 

PAGE 

Sherman in Atlanta — The March to the Sea — Rapacity of the 
Foragers — Capture of Atlanta — Hood Invades Tennessee — 
Battle of Franklin— Battle of Nashville 617 

CHAPTER XXX 

The Confederacy Tottering — Burning of Columbia — Lee Evacu- 
ates Petersburg — Richmond Captured — The Surrender at 
Appomattox — End of the War 633 

CHAPTER XXXI 

The Dispersal of the Army — War with Spain Causes New Or- 
ganization — Its Grave Weakness — The Santiago Campaign — 
The Porto Rico Campaign 648 

CHAPTER XXXII 

Dewey's Capture of Manila — Aguinaldo and the Insurrectors — 
Cost of the Philippines — The Army in Peace .... 676 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Battle of Bunker Hill 

Paul Revere's Ride . 

The Battle of Lexington 

The Battle on Concord Green 

Minute Men at Lexington 

Battle of Trenton . 

Surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga 

Washington at Monmouth 

Molly Pitcher at Monmouth . 

The Battle of New Orleans . 

Troops Arriving at the Mobilization Camp 

Skirmishers in Action 

Bombardment of Vera Cruz . 

Storming the Heights of Cerro Gordo 

Battle of Resaca de la Palma 

Attack on the Castle of Chapultepec 

Battle of Mexico City 

The Tented Field . 

A Pontoon Bridge . 

Battery No. 4 in Front of Yorktown 

Confederate Battery on James above Dutch 

Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee 

The Dead in " Bloody Lane " 

The Work of Federal Shells 

Stone Wall at Fredericksburg, Virginia 

Letters Home 

Mortar Battery in Action 
Troops Mobilizing in Texas . 
Field Gun in Action 
Ambulance Corps on San Juan Hill 
At the Siege of Santiago 
American Hospital Ship Relief at Siboney 
Arbitration in the Trenches near Manila 
Disappearing Gun at Sandy Hook 
Mortar Battery at Sandy Hook . 
First Brigade on March .... 

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Xll 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Pack Mule 

American Artillery Entering Ponce, P. R. . 
Colonel Roosevelt and His Rough Riders . 

Charging the Filipinos 

Grapevine Bridge Across Chickahominy River 

In the Trenches on San Juan Hill 

Fort Sumter in Ruins, April, 1865 

The Bridge at Poranaque 

Ruins of Arsenal at Richmond . 

Richmond After the Surrender 

A Regiment as It Is 

A Regiment as It Should Be 

American Troops Camping at Siboney 

General Lawton's Cavalry Returning After Bat 

tie in Which He Was Killed . 
Our Soldiers Entering Malolos 
American Firing Line at Malolos 
General Nelson A. Miles .... 
Morro Castle, Overlooking Santiago Harbor 
General William R. Shafter .... 
The Defile at Las Guasimas, Cuba 
Morro Castle, Santiago, at Time of Spanish 

Evacuation .... 

Automobiles Carrying Machine Guns 
General Leonard Wood . 
City and Harbor of Santiago 
Pasig River at Manila . 
Mountain Battery ; Assembling and Dismounting 
Ninth Cavalry in Camp, San Antonio 
Army Aviator in Flight . 



Facing 



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THE STORY OF OUR ARMY FOR 
YOUNG AMERICANS 

CHAPTER I 

The Beginnings of Revolution — Lexington and Concord — The Brit- 
ish Beleaguered in Boston — The Battle of Bunker Hill. 

Two lanterns gleaming in the belfry of the Old North 
Church, which still stands looking down upon the 
Copps Hill burying ground in Boston and upon the 
huddled homes of innumerable Italians who have made 
that part of the ancient American city their home, sig- 
nalled the beginning of the American Revolution. 
Their flickering light faintly illumined the birth of the 
United States of America. 

On the farther shore of the tidal River Charles, on 
that midnight of April i8, 1775, stood Paul Revere, 
a young engraver of Boston, who had been often used 
as a courier by the Committee of Safety, which had 
been formed among the Colonists to resist British 
aggressions. It was vague rumor that the British, long 
cooped up in Boston, would move that night to Lex- 
ington and Concord to destroy the munitions of war 
that the Colonists had gathered there in distrust of 
what the future might have in store for them. More 
than that it was the British purpose to seize the bodies 
of two " pestilent agitators," John Hancock, whose 
name was afterward writ large at the head of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence, and stout 
Sam Adams, who deserves if does any man the title of 
" Father of the American Revolution." 

Foot In stirrup through hours of darkness Revere 



2 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

" Watched with eager search 
The belfry tower of the Old North Church 
As it rose above the graves on the hill, 
Lonely and spectral, and sombre and still, 
And lo ! as he looks on the belfry's height, 
A glimmer and then a gleam of light; 
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, 
But lingers and gazes till full of his sight 
A second light in the belfry burns." 

Every American child knows Longfellow's poem and 
the story of the alarm, the march out from Boston and 
the headlong retreat, the volley on the village green 
at Lexington, and how " the British regulars fired and 
fled." We know now, however, that picturesque as 
was Revere's wild ride through the silent night with 
door-knockings and alarm-shouts at sleeping farms, it 
was only part of the system of spreading the warning 
which the Colonists had devised in those days before 
railroads and telegraphs. At Rev. Jonas Clark's house, 
near Medford, Hancock and Adams were staying with 
a guard of eight Minute Men. At Revere's clamor 
the sergeant came out demanding " less noise." 
" Noise ! " shouted Revere, " you'll have noise enough 
before long. The regulars are coming out." 

The main body of the British, an entire brigade 
under command of Major Smith, was slow in moving. 
A small detachment, six companies under Major Pit- 
cairn, was rushed forward to seize and hold Concord 
Bridge and to hold up all wayfarers or couriers who 
might rouse the country-side. Dismal was the failure 
of the latter effort. As Smith moved more leisurely 
along the highway he heard alarm bells ringing, cannon 
and muskets being fired, and the shouts of men calling 
to each other far across the fields. He had expected a 
holiday march and he confronted a whole people rushing 
to arms. Straightway he sent back to Boston for reen- 
forcements. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 3 

Pitcairn, some miles in advance, reached Lexington 
at sunrise. Under the fresh clear light of a June 
morning the little village, with its white-steepled church 
and simple colonial houses bordering the verdant green, 
seemed a picture of rural peace. But back of all lurked 
war. Two hours before a farmer, eluding Pitcairn, 
had reached the town bringing tidings of the invasion. 
The Minute Men had assembled, but so slow had been 
the British advance that they had thought the expedi- 
tion abandoned, and had retired to the tavern and 
neighboring houses for their breakfast. Now at the 
roll of the British drums all flocked out, forming an 
irregular line on the green, some 132 of them under 
command of Captain John Parker. 

"Disperse, ye rebels! Disperse!" shouted Pitcairn 
from his horse. None thought of obeying. All stood 
irresolute, for to both sides the orders not to be the 
first to fire had been absolute. Who broke the com- 
mand? Nobody knows exactly, but it appears that an 
American pulled trigger producing only a flash in the 
pan. Enough that, however, to justify a soldier in 
replying. Then there was a regular volley from the 
troops, and a few straggling shots from " the embat- 
tled farmers." All was over in a few minutes — save 
for the families of the seventeen Americans lying dead 
or wounded on the bloody sward. Pitcairn, who had 
no liking for his work, insists that the Americans fired 
first and he strove in every way to stop the fire of his 
men, but the shooting was continued as long as a 
militiaman remained in sight. Parker, the American 
commander, was wounded at the first volley, but con- 
tinued to fight and was slain by a bayonet-thrust. One, 
who in years bygone had carried the British flag in the 
victorious assault on Louisbourg, was shot down and 
bayoneted to death. Another dragged himself across 
the green to die in his wife's arms on his vine-clad 



4 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

porch. War was new, but very close to the homes of 
those simple, country-faring folk. 

Major Pitcairn waited a space for Smith to come 
up and then proceeded toward Concord. The hue and 
cry went forth before him. The militia and citizens, 
hundreds of whom had by this time assembled, began 
diligently the work of concealing the stores gathered at 
that town. While thus engaged they received word 
that the British in numbers of three to one were within 
two miles and approaching speedily. Thereupon the 
Americans took up positions from which they could 
watch the proceedings, it being determined to make no 
resistance until reenforcements should arrive, for the 
British were over 800 strong. 

For two hours the Redcoats had their will in Con- 
cord. Most of the ammunition and supplies they 
sought had been removed to the surrounding woods, 
but they broke up three twenty-pound cannon, spilled 
a quantity of flour and burned several barrels of 
wooden spoons and trenchers from which the warlike 
farmers had expected to eat their porridge in the field. 
All the while militia and Minute Men were flocking in 
singly and by companies. Dedham sent every able- 
bodied citizen between sixteen and seventy and before 
they started their march the minister of the village 
church invoked divine blessingjs upon their errand. 
Throughout this war of a peaceful people for their 
independence we find the ministers ready to bless the 
arms and then to wield them; as earnest in spurring 
on the living as in praying by the side of the slain. 

When the number of Americans in the field 
approached 450 it was determined to dislodge the 
British guard from the North Bridge. About three 
hundred were despatched for this purpose, and the 
guard though outnumbered, prepared both for resis- 
tance and to take up the planks of the structure. The 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS s 

provincials hesitated not an instant. " It is the King's 
highway and we have a right to march on it if we 
march to Boston. Forward men, forward!" cried 
Major Barrett, voicing the New England insistence on 
lawful rights. The British fired and two American 
soldiers fell. " Fire, fellow-soldiers ! For God's sake, 
fire! " shouted Major Buttrick and the American arms 
spoke in response. The provincials swept on across 
the bridge and its defenders retreated. One of them 
was killed by a farmer's boy with a hatchet, from which 
spread a persistent rumor that the Americans, like the 
barbarous Indians, scalped and mutilated their fallen 
foes. The bridge was now in the hands of the de- 
fenders of American liberty — the bridge destined to 
become a national shrine commemorated by Emerson 
in his ode beginning, 

" By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled; 
Here once the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

Then began the British retreat that soon became a 
disorderly flight. The troops were veterans, men who 
had served in the British wars with France and the 
peoples of Continental Europe. For arms they were 
well equipped, for uniforms rather too well, for their 
heavy scarlet coats, towering hats or shakos, and heavy 
knapsacks put them at a sore disadvantage in dealing 
with the countrymen who came flocking from every 
side in shirt-sleeves, armed with long hunting rifles in 
the use of which they had been well trained, and 
schooled in Indian wars not to disdain the shelter of 
tree-trunks and stone-walls, " They seemed to drop 
from the clouds," wrote a British ofllicer. For a time 
the fugitives strove to maintain a certain military for- 
mation; sending out flanking parties on either side and 



6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

maintaining a rear guard. This effort was soon aban- 
doned, and the road was crowded with a dense column 
of weary, dejected men hobbling, walking, and running 
back toward Lexington. At that spot, where a few 
hours before they had shot down the farmers who 
dared dispute their passage, they now hoped to be 
saved from annihilation by the reenforcements on the 
way from Boston under command of Lord Percy. 

The Americans had no military formation. They 
had officers, but every man was a commander unto 
himself. Men were there who had scaled the Heights 
of Abraham at Quebec under Wolfe; had fought the 
French at Louisbourg, and the Indians in defence of 
their homes and firesides. Long years they had fol- 
lowed the British flag; now their wrath was levelled 
against it. The road was bordered by stone-walls, 
woods, and dense thickets of underbrush. Every such 
shelter was full of American marksmen trained from 
boyhood to pick off a squirrel with a rifle bullet from 
the highest tree-top. The enemy marched fast along 
the sinuous road, leaving his dead and wounded 
behind, and the Americans after striking him from one 
thicket would take the short cut across the fields and 
lay in wait at the next point where the woods grew 
densest. At times the fighting was hand-to-hand, 
though as the Americans had no bayonets they avoided 
this. At Fiske's Hill two fighters confronted each 
other. " You are a dead man ! " said the British soldier 
as he levelled his gun at an American. "And so are 
you," responded the other. The shots rang out. Both 
fell, one dead, the other mortally wounded. 

Panting from heat and exertion, their heavy knap- 
sacks and trappings thrown away, too panic-stricken 
even to defend themselves, the defeated soldiers ran 
on until at Lexington they found Lord Percy's timely 
reenforcements drawn up in a hollow square to receive 




C/0 fc. 

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-J £ 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 7 

and to succor them. It was none too early. " They 
were so much exhausted with fatigue," writes a British 
historian, " that they were obliged to lie down for 
rest on the ground, their tongues hanging out of their 
mouths like dogs after a chase." There they lay and 
rested for some two hours. Percy had one thousand 
fresh men and two field pieces with which for a time 
he held the Americans in check. 

Percy's appearance saved the British force from ab- 
ject surrender or annihilation. Yet when Colonel Smith 
set out from Boston that June morning he anticipated 
nothing but a holiday march with a bonfire of " rebel " 
goods and storehouses as a diversion. When he saw 
the countrymen swarming out, rifle in hand, he vaguely 
scented danger and luckily sent back for aid. Lord 
Percy, ordered to his assistance, marched out from Bos- 
ton about nine o'clock in the morning with two cannon, 
three regiments and two divisions of marines. His 
bands were playing " Yankee Doodle " in derision of 
the Americans. A school-boy shouted the apt retort, 
" You march out to Yankee Doodle, but you'll run 
back to Chevy Chase." The allusion was to the famous 
ballad of Chevy Chase which tells of the woful defeat 
of an early Earl Percy on the field of that name. If 
the school-boys were ready to jeer the foe, the school- 
teachers, like the ministers, were ready to do battle with 
him. Lovell, the master of that Latin School which 
has been Boston's pride for a century and a half, heard 
the tramp of the marching Redcoats. " War's begun. 
School's done. Dimitite libros," quoth he and slam- 
ming his desk went forth to join the populace. When 
Percy's column reached Roxbury, one Williams, the 
local school-master, looked out of his window. 
" School's out, boys," he said, and locking his door went 
for his musket and so away to join the Minute Men. 
He served through the seven years of Revolution. 



8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Though he had nearly eighteen hundred 
effective men and two field pieces, Lord Percy 
m^de no effort to turn upon the undisciplined 
Americans who had used his regulars so ill. In- 
stead, after a two hours' rest he took up once 
more the retreat. Again the Americans swarmed upon 
his flanks and surged against the rear of his retreating 
column. Now and then the artillery beat them back, 
for as yet the Minute Men were not well used to great 
guns. But they rallied again and again to the attack, 
and were never fiercer in their fighting than when, 
just at sundown, Percy's men rushed across the narrow 
causeway that connected Charlestown with the main- 
land and sank down safe under the protecting guns of 
the British men-of-war. It was just the critical 
moment. George Washington, writing later of the 
battle said, " If the retreat had not been as precipitate 
as It was — and God knows it could not have been more 
so — the ministerial troops must have surrendered, or 
been totally cut off. For they had not arrived In 
Charlestown (under cover of their ships) half an hour 
before a powerful body of men from Marblehead and 
Salem was at their heels and must, If they had happened 
to be up one hour sooner, inevitably have Intercepted 
their retreat to Charlestown." 

In this action the British lost 73 killed, 174 wounded, 
and 26 missing; the Americans, 49 killed and 39 
wounded. But the British had lost the day and their 
prestige as Invincible veterans. The American farmers 
had shown the world that they not only could but 
would fight. They had learned that a red coat did not 
make its wearer invulnerable nor, of necessity, cover a 
stout heart. The Minute Men had shown that though 
they did not always march to drum and trumpet, 
though hickory shirts and caps rather than scarlet and 
bearskins were their uniform, they could be relied upon 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 9 

to be where they were needed and to maintain them- 
selves against all comers. In England the news of the 
action caused dismay, a fall of stocks, and savage criti- 
cism of Lord Percy and his officers. In America it 
solidified the Colonists into a cooperating whole. 

The British lingered but briefly in Charlestown and 
then returned to Boston. Around that city gathered some 
sixteen thousand armed Americans, intent upon keeping 
the enemy bottled up in the town. All the surrounding 
country-side was swept clear of provisions, and even 
the islands in the harbor were reduced for the time 
to deserts. Efforts to provision the garrison by water 
were frustrated in several cases. All the time skirmish- 
ing was going on by land or water. Now the 
provincials would put out in boats and burn a schooner, 
or raid one of the channel islands where food was 
thought to be available for the beleaguered British. 
Then the enemy would retaliate by the seizure of 
Yankee ships and provisions. There was sharp skir- 
mishing throughout, which was of service in accustom- 
ing the untrained farmers to the sights and sounds 
of battle. But throughout this process of starving 
the British garrison into subjection, the peaceful inhabi- 
tants of Boston suffered equally with those who wore 
the red. Great distress spread among them. They 
had no means of support, for all the customary indus- 
tries of the town were destroyed. Their friends and 
relations were in the trenches outside, exposed to the 
vicissitudes of life in the field and all the perils of war. 
A great body of troops were quartered upon them, and 
more were on the seas bound for Boston. The Ameri- 
can people long had hatred of the professional soldier, 
and the action of George III in quartering troops upon 
the colonies was one of the grievances set forth in the 
Declaration of Independence. In Boston, even before 
the outbreak of hostilities, her thrifty, work-a-day 



lo STORY OF OUR ARMY 

citizens were unable to understand this body of scarlet- 
coated men loafing the days away on the Common or 
in King Street. That an able-bodied man should be 
able to earn a living simply by being prepared for a 
war which might never come, was incomprehensible 
to the average American. Years later the Count 
Rochambeau, who had come as a volunteer from France 
to fight for American liberties, used to tell with amuse- 
ment how people would ask him what he did for a 
living at home when there were no wars. This instinc- 
tive distrust of the regular-army man has been one of 
the strongest features of the American character, and 
it is part of the purpose of this book to show how it 
has been gradually overcome by the good work of our 
United States Army in peace as well as in war. 

But to return to Gage and the British in Boston. 
Seeing that he could scarce feed his own troops and 
hopeless of alleviating the distress of the civilians, the 
General began granting passes to such of the latter as 
desired to leave the city. Some thousands, mostly 
sympathizers with the revolutionary cause, thereupon 
went out. But the " Tories," as those who supported 
the cause of the king were called, protested that this 
was in fact reenforcing the " rebel " army, and the 
permission was gradually withdrawn. Then Gage, fear- 
ing an American assault and that the citizens would 
make common cause with the assailants, forced a gen- 
eral disarmament. Some thousands of firearms were 
given up, and a curious light was thrown upon the 
habits of the time by the fact that there was about one 
weapon to each able-bodied inhabitant. That was the 
reason why the Colonists were able to maintain them- 
selves against the British troops, and why years later 
the statesmen of the infant nation wrote into Its con- 
stitution that the right of the people to bear arms shall 
not be abridged. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS ii 

Historians and students of military tactics have 
always wondered why General Gage, instead of trying 
to ameliorate his situation with makeshift expedients, 
did not cut his way through the American lines, roll 
them back to this side and that, and open communi- 
cation with the country and its plenteous store of food. 
He was outnumbered to be sure, but he could concen- 
trate his whole force in overwhelming power at any 
fixed point faster than the Patriots could gather troops 
from their widely extended lines. Moreover, the 
Americans, though numerically stronger, were ill- 
equipped and wholly undisciplined. They had no heavy 
siege guns, few bayonets, and their muskets were not 
of one standard and required ammunition of varying 
sizes. The militia was gathered from several colonies, 
zealous and patriotic no doubt, but each body tenacious 
of its own independence and recognizing no supreme 
command. Every feature of the situation should have 
called upon Gage to rouse his troops and sweep away 
these " peasants " who beleaguered him. Instead he 
sat supine in his headquarters and even after a British 
fleet had brought Generals Burgoyne, Clinton and 
Howe to his aid with nearly ten thousand fresh troops, 
he still awaited the American attack. 

As his shop was entering Boston, General Burgoyne 
asked how many regulars there were in Boston. 

" About five thousand," was the response. 

*' What! " cried the General, "ten thousand peasants 
keep five thousand King's troops shut up ! Well, let 
US get in and we'll soon find elbow-room." 

The General got in but he never found elbow-room, 
for he only left Boston in defeat. But the phrase 
stuck to him, much to his irritation. Later, after re- 
verses in Canada, he was brought back to Boston a 
prisoner of war. As he was boarding the ferry-boat 
at Charlestown an aged crone perched on a near-by 



12 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

shed shrilled out," Make way! make way! The Gen- 
eral's coming. Give him elbow-room." 

In the end, instead of Gage's moving to free his 
troops from the Boston peninsula, the Americans struck 
first. Charlestown, the spot at which Lord Percy's col- 
umn fleeing from Lexington had found refuge, was a 
hilly peninsula jutting out from the mainland to which 
it was joined by a neck so narrow that one standing in 
the centre could toss a stone into the Charles River on 
the one hand, the Mystic on the other. Two hills. 
Breed's and Bunker's, rose near the centre of the penin- 
sula; the former being high and much nearer Boston. 
At the foot of Breed's Hill nestled in 1775 a little 
wooden town of a thousand houses or so. Now a great 
city packs its factories, shops, tenements, and homes 
closely about the verdent eminence, on the crest of 
which the American people have erected a towering 
granite monument in commemoration of what, by com- 
mon consent, is deemed the first pitched battle of the 
American Revolution. 

Notwithstanding Gage's hesitancy and inaction the 
watchful Americans became convinced in June, 1775, 
that he was planning a hostile move. What, in fact, 
he was contemplating was a move to the southeast of 
Boston and the seizure of Dorchester Heights which, 
if fortified by the Americans, would give them control 
of the town. With an uneasy sense that something — 
none knew what — was doing with the enemy, the 
American Committee of Safety determined to strike 
first. The offensive move they made was the fortifica- 
tion of Breed's Hill, just a mile from the church where 
the Revere lanterns had hung, and commanding the 
north end of the city. 

At nine o'clock on the night of Friday, June 16, 
the common in Cambridge, under shadow of Harvard 
College, witnessed the muster of about two hundred 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 13 

provincial troops, including a company of artillery 
with two field pieces, all under command of Colonel 
William Prescott, whose grandson gave to the writing 
of American history the fervor and genius that the 
grandsire gave to the making of it. Prescott was 
among the most earnest of Massachusetts patriots. 
Some months before this occasion, his brother-in-law, 
Colonel Willard, expostulated with him for his open 
patriotism, saying that if persisted in, his life and estate 
would pay the forfeiture of treason. " I have made 
up my mind upon that subject," he replied. " I think 
it probable I may be found in arms, but I will never 
be taken alive. The Tories shall never have the pleas- 
ure of seeing me taken alive." 

On this June night Colonel Prescott had orders in his 
pocket to seize and fortify Bunker Hill — orders not to 
be made public until his column had safely crossed the 
narrow neck. And so, when the venerable President 
of Harvard College had offered an eloquent prayer for 
the soldiers and their cause, the column set out, silently, 
without drum or talk, the entrenching tools carried in 
ox-carts at the rear; the van led by two sergeants with 
dark lanterns whose fitful flashes lighted up the way to 
the battle field — faint gleams indeed, but destined to 
light up a historic conflict. 

Arrived at the field there was dispute about the 
course to be taken. The orders read plainly enough 
" Bunker Hill," but Breed's was high and nearer 
to Boston. Contention ran high until the engineer 
ofl^cers pointed out that if debate continued the works 
could not be completed until daybreak when the British 
on their ships in the river below or in camp on Copp's 
Hill opposite, would check work with their cannon. 
So Breed's Hill was chosen, but the battle, and 
eventually the hill, took its name from the origi- 
nal orders. The fortification planned was a 



14 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

rough quadrangle with a wing running off one 
side toward the Mystic River. It was a stout 
earthwork about six feet high with a trench in front, 
and a wooden platform behind on which the defenders 
were to stand while firing. Pick, shovel, and mattock, 
tools with which the militant farmers were familiar, 
were plied with zeal and the fort began to assume 
rough form in the night. Far below, the lanterns of 
the British ships glimmered dimly on the tide, and the 
long drawn cry, " All's well " of the sentries among the 
graves on Copp's Hill sounded faintly across the flow- 
ing river. The officers urged on the men, of whom 
several hundred would work an hour, and then go on 
guard duty while fresh workers took their places. 
Prescott was there, and Israel Putnam, " Old Put," 
whose daring had been tested in the French war, and 
who was as intolerant in council as he was undaunted in 
battle. During the night came also General Warren, 
whose superior rank entitled him to command but who 
declined to displace Prescott. Later there arrived a 
company of New Hampshire men under command of 
John Stark, whom we shall hear of again as threatening 
to make Molly Stark a widow should he fail to beat 
the British at Bennington. 

Through the night the toil went on and when the 
light grew gray in the east a sleepy sentinel on His 
Majesty's Ship " Lively " rubbed his eyes and gazed in 
blank amaze at a long line of earthworks, on which 
men by the hundreds were still working, and over which 
flapped a defiant flag. What flag it was the sentinel 
could not make out. For that matter history itself 
cannot tell us to-day. It may have been the pine-tree 
flag so popular in Massachusetts, or some other bit of 
emblematic bunting. At any rate it was not the scarlet 
banner of King George, but a rebellious rag. So after 
rolling drums and piping of bosun's whistles the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 15 

" Lively " let fly a broadside which thundered In the 
clear morning air and woke up the artillerists on Copp's 
Hill who continued the cannons' chorus. 

But artillery bothered the Colonials not a bit and 
they worked away perfecting their defences. When a 
round shot struck unpleasantly near and some of the 
diggers showed natural alarm Colonel Prescott leaped to 
the top of the embankment and strode up and down, 
encouraging his men by his display of fearlessness. On 
the other side of the water, General Gage, through his 
field-glasses, noted the tall figure with flowing coat who 
so calmly exposed himself. 

"Who is he?" he asked Councillor Willard, who 
stood at his side. 

After a look through the glasses Willard replied: 
" My brother-in-law, Colonel Prescott." 

"Will he fight?" 

*' To the death," replied Willard, remembering 
Prescott's remark about not being taken in arms. 

All the morning the cannon roared but did little hurt 
to the Americans. One man was killed by a grape-shot 
and the farmers, still new to the necessary brutality of 
war which lets the dead rest where they fall while the 
fight goes on, stopped work aghast. 

"What shall we do with him?" asked a subaltern 
of Prescott. 

" Bury him, of course." 

"What! without prayers?" 

And a chaplain threw down his spade and insisted 
on performing the sacred ofl^ce over the first victim of 
Bunker Hill, while the men, despite Prescott's com- 
mands, gathered reverently about with uncovered heads. 

Prescott knew, as all with any experience of war 
there knew, that the thunderous chorus of the cannon 
was but the overture to the grand and tragic drama 
that was to be enacted on that gentle hill-slope that 



i6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

fair June day. Though the sun was sultry he spared 
his men no exertion. But while no time was wasted 
in his command, it was sorely squandered in the main 
camp at Cambridge. When Prescott's party set out 
it was understood that rations were to follow them. 
But none were forwarded and between heat, hunger, 
and fatigue the men were in sorry straits before noon. 
Worse even than the lack of food was the failure of 
General Ward to send forward more ammunition. 
Powder was the scarcest thing in the American lines 
that day. In all the towns about Cambridge could be 
found only twenty-seven half-barrels and Connecticut 
sent thirty-six half-barrels more. Even this slender 
supply was not rushed to the front, and we read in 
memoirs of the time of officers sitting on the tongues 
of ox-carts and weighing out half a gill of gunpowder 
each to soldiers who were going to give battle to the 
well-equipped regulars of the British army. 

About noon the bristling crowds that had been seen 
during the morning in the streets of Boston, took the 
form of marching bodies of troops. Evidently Gage 
had made up his mind to attack the works and their 
defenders — their work done — stopped to watch the 
marshalling of their foe. The spectacle from the 
breastworks was a thrilling one. Boston still had its 
three hills — two have since been levelled — which gave 
the town its early name of Tremont or Trimountain — 
and the circling rows of housetops, rising one above the 
other to the crest of these eminences, were crowded 
with citizens watching the beginning of the fray. 
Scarce a cloud flecked the sky, and the sun beat down 
upon the blue rippling waters of the Charles, as later 
it beat fiercely on the red coats and heavy headgear 
of the British troops advancing to the assault. At 
this moment, however, the troops were on the water 
being ferried across to the Charlestown shore in a 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 17 

multitude of boats, while the warships in the stream 
covered their crossing with an active fire, as did the 
battery on Copp's Hill, its guns roaring over the 
graves of patriots dead and gone. The Americans 
made no effort to harass the troops as they landed. 
Powder was too precious to be used in long-range 
fighting. 

There had been dissension in the ranks of the British 
commanders over the plan of battle. Clinton urged 
that instead of assaulting the Americans in front, the 
troops should be ferried to the Neck, then landed, and 
attack the works from the rear. The men-of-war 
could have protected the landing easily, and the Ameri- 
cans, outnumbered and deprived of their protecting 
works, would have been annihilated or captured. It 
was easy later to see the superiority of this plan of 
action, but at the time it was overruled. The fact is 
that the British, stung by the disgrace of Concord and 
Lexington, were eager for a straight-out fight and 
clamored for the assault. Prescott, as he saw the plan 
developed, was confident of victory, and rejected 
vigorously the suggestion that his men be relieved 
after their night's work by fresh troops. " The men," 
he said, " who built this breastwork can best defend 
It." Putnam, too, knew his men, knew well how great 
was the advantage of a shelter, however slight, for 
their bodies, to men who had been trained in the war 
tactics of Indians, " The Americans," he once said, " are 
not afraid of their heads though very much afraid of 
their legs; if you cover these they will fight forever." 

By three o'clock the British were all ashore, drawn 
up ready for the assault. It was a brilliant body of 
troops, more spectacular than business-like, for that 
was the time in the development of war when nations 
thought it more important that their soldiers should 
dazzle the eye, than that they be stripped for swift 



i8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

and effective fighting. These Englishmen, huddled to- 
gether on the shore under the protecting fire of their 
warships, made a striking picture in scarlet, gold, white, 
and the rich hues of furs. But the scarlet coats were 
of heavy cloth ill-fitted for exertions under a blazing 
June sun. The white cross-belts supported heavy 
knapsacks holding three days' rations. The brass but- 
tons and epaulets sparkled in the sunlight and served 
to direct the deadly American fire. The towering 
hats, some of them bearskin shakos weighing eight or 
ten pounds, were more foolish on a battle field than 
the Indians' paint and feathers, and the Chinaman's 
terrifying masks. The men under all these trappings 
were stout of heart and of body, but when we are told 
that the equipment of each one weighed more than 
twenty-five pounds we recognize that they took the 
field under a handicap. 

After listening to a speech in which General Howe 
assured them that if beaten in this battle they would 
be driven out of Boston altogether, the troops gave 
three cheers and began the advance, at quick-step, 
firing as they marched, at the American earthworks 
that lay silent and sinister in their front. In all about 
three thousand troops were in the charge, or the sup- 
porting lines. General Howe, a man of high courage, 
who would have scorned to send his men whither he 
would not himself go, commanded the right wing, 
seeking to break the American line behind a rail-fence 
that stretched from the redoubt down to the Mystic 
River; General Pigot led the left wing against the 
redoubt itself. The artillery tried to aid in the at- 
tack but soon ceased firing as it was found that twelve- 
pound balls had been served out for six-pound cannon. 
Critics of the time said that the trouble was due to 
the fact that, " the wretched blunder of the oversized 
balls sprung from the dotage of an ofl'icer of rank who 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 19 

spends his whole time in dallying with the school-master's 
daughter." There, it seems, must have been a true 
Daughter of the American Revolution. However, 
on the Patriots' side the artillery was equally futile, 
though not Cupid but mere inefficiency and lack of 
courage put the Yankee guns out of commission. 

Men who have served in battle say that the critical 
time that tries men's nerves is the brief pause before 
the first volley. The flash, the roar, the smoke, the 
sight of companions writhing in agony, the knowledge 
that an enemy is doing his best to hurt, to kill you, 
rouses the mad rage that leads men to forget danger 
and self. The British had ample time for this calm 
contemplation of the peril they were about to confront. 
Their march lay across about half a mile of fields 
knee-deep in thick grass, crossed here and there by 
fences which must needs be torn down. The sun beat 
down upon them and the heavy load they carried 
fairly dragged them down. But as they marched, 
firing now and again without effect, the line of beetling 
breastworks before them gave no answering shot. 
They could see the muzzles of the rifles of the invisible 
defenders resting on the parapet sullenly watching, 
watching. 

What they could not see or hear was the officers in 
the trenches running up and down the lines command- 
ing the men to hold their fire. Every American school- 
boy knows the shrewd but simple orders of that day, 
"Pick off the officers"; "Aim at the gold-laced 
coats"; "Fire low; aim at the waist bands"; "Save 
your powder." " Lads, you are all marksmen," cried 
Prescott. " Don't one of you fire till you see the 
whites of their eyes." But it was not easy to hold the 
eager riflemen in check; now and then a shot rang out. 
Down at the rail-fence Putnam swore he would cut 
down any men who fired without orders. In the 



20 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

redoubt Prescott sent officers to knock up the muzzles 
of the guns. Those officers knew how scarce the pow- 
der was; the men did not. 

At last the order came. The red line was within 
eight rods of the rail-fence and the redoubt when the 
blast rang out. Those deadly muzzles, silent so long, 
had been kept trained on the British and every bullet 
found its mark. The enemy was ranked according 
to the tactics of those times, shoulder to shoulder, 
elbow touching elbow, a line impossible to miss. The 
first rank went down at the first fire; the second, strug- 
gling over the bodies of their companions, pushed on 
only to be swept away as the American muzzle-loaders 
spoke again and again. As Private Peter Brown 
wrote from the trenches later to his New England 
mother, " When the enemy came up to swallow they 
found a choaky mouthful." As the lines halted in 
confusion the Americans began to pick their marks. 
"There! See that officer. Let me have a shot at 
him ! " and three or four guns would ring out at once. 
The rail-fence, where stout " Old Put " commanded, 
was the scene of the fiercest fighting, the British 
approaching almost near enough to push it over, but 
the muskets rested in deadly calm on the topmost rail, 
smote them down. A British officer wrote, " Our 
light infantry was served up in companies against the 
grass fence without being able to penetrate; — indeed 
how could we penetrate? Most of our grenadiers and 
light infantry the moment of presenting themselves, 
lost three-fourths and many nine-tenths of their men. 
Some had only eight and nine men a company left; 
some only three, four, and five." 

Human nature could not withstand so deadly a fire. 
Deaf to the appeals of their officers, the surviving 
British turned and fled. With the utmost difficulty 
the Americans were restrained from rushing out of the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 21 

trenches in pursuit, and on every side the cry went up, 
" Are Americans cowards! " 

But Prescott, Putnam, and the gallant Warren knew 
the dogged British courage well. Moreover, they 
knew how grave was the situation of the defenders on 
the hill. Mounting his horse, Putnam dashed back to 
Cambridge to demand reenforcements and more am- 
munition. The situation there was discouraging and 
discreditable. While the men under fire in the 
trenches were cool and efficient, the men at the base 
in the rear were excited and plunged in confusion. 
There was much galloping to and fro with futile 
messages, and some bodies of troops started for the 
front, but few got to the scene of battle. No powder 
was sent at all. Had there been intelligence and sys- 
tem in the rear, as there were devotion and gallantry 
at the front, the story of Bunker Hill would have been 
different. 

Again the British advanced to the assault; mainly 
fresh troops this time, though still led by the gallant 
Howe and Pigot. Howe had gone through the 
leaden storm unhurt, but the blood of others that lay 
thick upon the grass had stained his white silk stock- 
ings crimson. The story of the second charge differs 
little from that of the first. The scene was made the 
more terrifying by the fact that "carcasses " or large 
shells filled with Inflammables fired from Copp's Hill 
had set Charlestown ablaze and meeting-houses and 
homes were all in flames. General Burgoyne writing 
to Lord Stanley afterward said: 

" And now ensued one of the greatest scenes of 
war that can be conceived; If we look to the height, 
Howe's corps ascending the hill in the face of en- 
trenchments, and in a very disadvantageous ground, 
was much engaged; to the left, the enemy pouring In 
fresh troops by thousands over the land (here Gen- 



22 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

eral Burgoyne's view is imaginative rather than real) ; 
and in the arm of the sea our ships and floating bat- 
teries cannonading them; straight before us a large 
and noble town in one great blaze — the church steeples 
being timber were great pyramids of fire above the 
rest; behind us the church steeples, and our own camp 
covered with spectators of the rest of our army which 
was engaged; the hills around the country covered with 
spectators; the enemy all in anxious suspense; the roar 
of cannon, mortars and musketry; the crash of 
churches, ships upon the stocks and whole streets fall- 
ing together; the storm of the redoubt with the objects 
above described to fill the eye; and the reflection that 
perhaps a defeat was the final loss to the British Em- 
pire in America to fill the mind; made the whole a 
picture and a complication of horror and importance 
beyond anything that ever came to my lot to be wit- 
ness to." 

So for the second time the British line faltered and 
gave way before that deadly fire. The toll of death 
lay heavy on its bravest and best. Three times Howe 
found himself standing alone on the field, his aides 
and oflicers about him having gone down in one red 
burial blent. One company of the Fifty-Second Regi- 
ment had every man killed or wounded. Where the 
dead lay like windrows on the grassy field the gleam 
of gold lace in the sunlight told how cruelly the Ameri- 
can fire had marked down the officers for its own. 
After the battle some British critics complained of the 
action of the men; but the roster of the dead stilled 
any question as to the gallantry of the officers. 

Baffled, but not beaten, the British gathered again 
at the water-side, within range indeed of the Colonial 
rifles, but safe since the scarcitv of powder checked the 
fire of the men in the trenches. This time neither 
officers nor men were eager to renew the assault. '* It 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 23 

is sheer butchery," murmured some as Howe pressed 
on the work of reforming the lines. The troops had 
lost their confident air. They had learned that if in- 
deed they were confronted by peasants the American 
peasantry could stand firm and shoot straight. The 
officers had to prick the men sharply with sword-points 
and bayonets, and strike them with scabbards to force 
them into line. But reenforcements came from the 
other shore. General Clinton, who had watched the 
progress of the disaster, came to serve as a volunteer. 
The new attack was ordered more wisely. Heavy 
hats and knapsacks were discarded. The attack was 
centred on the redoubt with only a side demonstration 
at the rail-fence. The artillery was so posted as to 
command the interior of the redoubt. The attack was 
made in column instead of the long line offering a fair 
target to the defenders. 

From the redoubt Prescott watched these new dis- 
positions with grave dread. The silence of the British 
guns foreshadowed a desperate charge. The new po- 
sition of the enemy's cannon enabled them to rake 
the redoubt with murderous volleys. From Cam- 
bridge came no reenforcements and above all no pow- 
der. Of that prime necessity of warfare there was 
not enough in the American works for more than two 
volleys. He ordered the men to hold their fire until 
the enemy was within sixty feet. Stones were gathered 
for use in hand-to-hand fighting and, as there were not 
more than fifty bayonets in the whole force, the men 
were told to club their muskets when the enemy 
mounted the parapet — for that it would come to that 
pass there could be no doubt. 

The British came on gallantly and in perfect silence, 
for their orders had been to rush the works at the 
point of the bayonet. At twenty yards they were met 
by a volley, but after a moment's hesitation, pressed on. 



24 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

The American fire slackened — the powder was nearly 
gone. Howe turned one end of the redoubt; Pigot 
the other, while red-coated soldiers swarmed over it 
in front. An officer of marines waved his sword from 
the crest crying, " Come on men! The day is ours! " 
and fell dead. It was Major Pitcairn who so dough- 
tily had ordered the " rebels " on Lexington Green to 
throw down their arms and disperse. Within the re- 
doubt defender and assailant were so thickly mingled 
in the smoke that firearms could be but little used — 
the fighting was with bayonets and clubbed muskets. 

The Americans retreating crossed the crest of 
Bunker Hill. Here the gallant Putnam had some 
half-completed works and here he strove to rally the 
fugitives. "Make a stand here!" he cried. "We 
can stop them yet. In God's name stop and give one 
shot more!" But still no powder, and the helpless 
and dispirited troops streamed away across Charles- 
town Neck and so on to Cambridge where was the 
ammunition that might have saved the day. In the 
last stand was slain Joseph Warren, best beloved of 
the patriots whose activity and eloquence had brought 
on the Revolution — doomed to die in its first pitched 
battle. 

There was no pursuit by the British, who contented 
themselves with fortifying the hill and resting on 
their arms. Prescott, a very glutton for the fight, stormed 
about Cambridge, denouncing those who had failed to 
support him. " Give me fifteen hundred men and 
ammunition and I will retake the position," he cried. 
But the moment was passed. The day was lost and 
won. For the British it was a Pyrrhic victory — an- 
other such and they would be undone. According to 
official reports they had lost 1,054 men — American 
historians claim more, but even that is over thirty per 
cent. That was a higher loss than on the historic fields 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 25 

of Fontenoy, Waterloo and Gettysburg. But the 
battle of Waterloo lasted all day; Gettysburg, three 
days; that of Bunker Hill, an hour and a half. The 
American loss was 411 killed and wounded, or about 
twenty per cent, of the force engaged. 

In its results Bunker Hill was one of the great bat- 
tles of history. Was it an American defeat? True 
England won the hill, but she lost thirteen colonies. 
Never was there a finer illustration of the adage, 
" Truth loses battles but wins wars." In the parade 
ground of the citadel at Quebec, England's Gibraltar 
of this continent, stands a little old brass cannon. 
*' This was captured at Bunker Hill," says the scarlet- 
coated soldier who shows tourists about, smiling with 
a touch of malice if there be, as there usually are, citi- 
zens of the United States among them. 

" All right," answered a Yankee once, robbing the 
sneer of its sting forever. " You keep the gun; we've 
got the hill." 



CHAPTER II 

Creation of the Army — Siege of Boston — Taking of Ticonderoga — 
Expedition Against Quebec — The British Evacuate Boston. 

The result of the Battle of Bunker Hill left the 
British in possession of Boston and Charlestown. The 
Americans had all the surrounding country. Both of 
the invested towns were on large promontories con- 
nected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus, or neck, 
as a flower is held to the parent plant by a slender stem. 
By binding tightly this stem one can cause the flower to 
wilt for lack of sustenance. By blocking the two necks 
with fortifications the Americans could starve the 
British into subjection, and this they straightway pro- 
ceeded to do. 

Meantime the news of the events in Massachusetts 
had stirred the whole band of colonies from Maine to 
South Carolina. Swift carriers galloped out of Cam- 
bridge before the wounds of those who fell at Lexing- 
ton were stanched, bearing bulletins of the affair. 
Ridiculously incorrect some of these proclamations 
were, but they had their effect. War-fire blazed 
throughout the land. Men dropped plow, and axe, 
and flew to arms. The Committee of Safety called 
for men to defend wives and children " from the 
butchering hands of an inhuman soldiery." The 
troops thus collected, provincial militia, minute men, 
free companies, and individual volunteers gathered In 
and about Cambridge. New England and New York 
furnished most, though some began coming In early 
from Pennsylvania and Virginia. But It was a rabble, 
not an army. There were men there trained to com- 
ae 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 27 

mand in the wars with the French and the Indians, but 
they were not always in command. The country mili- 
tia companies conducted their military affairs on the 
town-meeting principle, and it was not always the best 
soldier who was elected captain. When the authority 
of general officers was involved there was apt to be a 
clash because of the antagonistic ambitions and jealous- 
ies of the colonies represented. Rhode Island did not 
see why her militia should serve under a Massachu- 
setts general, and such a situation bred confusion and 
almost open mutiny. It was natural that with the 
scene of action in and about Boston and with that 
colony furnishing the greater number of the troops, it 
should expect the chief command. Accordingly Gen- 
eral Artemas Ward was appointed commander-in-chief 
by Massachusetts May 20, and was in command at 
Cambridge on Bunker Hill day. Probably the failure 
to swiftly support the troops at the front was then due 
to the slenderness of his authority. But even before 
he took command it had been determined to ask the 
Continental Congress to designate a commander-in- 
chief. A messenger was sent to Philadelphia to com- 
municate this fact to the Congress which was then sit- 
ting there. 

With that Congress begins properly the Story of 
Our Army. There had been fighting men in the 
colonies ever since the times of Myles Standish and 
Captain John Smith. There had been battles, well 
fought, like those of Fort Duquesne, Louisbourg and 
Bunker Hill. But the fighting men had enrolled and 
the battles been fought under the scarlet flag of St. 
George or the diverse flags of the colonies. Now they 
were to serve under national authority and a national 
flag — though the design for the latter was not at once 
approved. 

June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress took up 



28 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the burden of the war. It took over the troops of 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and 
Rhode Island. It provided for the raising of an army; 
it drew up the first edition of the Articles of War, 
appointed four major-generals and eight brigadier- 
generals and chose George Washington, of Virginia, 
commander-in-chief. 

What we would call to-day " politics " had quite as 
much to do with the selection of Washington as had 
strictly military considerations. He had, it is true, 
some repute as a soldier, resting mainly on the skill 
with which he had extricated the shattered remnant of 
Braddock's army from the trap set for them by the 
French and Indians at Fort Duquesne. But he was 
easily the foremost citizen of Virginia and as such a 
man of large influence throughout the Southern colo- 
nies. New England had taken the lead in the earlier 
stages of agitation against Great Britain and armed 
resistance to her authority. Accordingly, it appeared 
to John Adams, of Boston, a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress, destined later to be President of 
the then unthought-of United States, that to select the 
eminent Virginian would allay possible jealousy among 
the Southern colonies and weld them into a harmoni- 
ous whole. Washington had not sought the com- 
mand, and accepted it not without misgivings. " I am 
prepared," he wrote to a friend, " to bid farewell to 
what little reputation I may now possess." His words 
were prophetic, so far as momentary repute was con- 
cerned, for the Revolutionary days did not differ from 
our own as far as the price exacted from public men 
for their promotion was concerned. Later genera- 
tions have raised Washington to the position of a 
demi-god, but in his own day he had to bear the shafts 
of slander and the ribaldries of ridicule even as do the 
great soldiers and statesmen of later days. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 29 

With Washington were commissioned other general 
officers whose names will often recur in this story. 
Senior among the major-generals was Artemus Ward, 
who at the moment was in command of the troops 
around Boston. He served until the British evacu- 
ated that city and then resigned. Major-General 
Philip Schuyler was a New Yorker, a soldier tried by 
service in the Indian wars. Of Charles Lee, more 
was expected than of any of the new major-generals, 
for his manner and conversation were brilliant and 
plausible. He turned out to be an adventurer and 
probably a traitor. His chief place in history rests 
on the fact that he acted in so unsoldierly a man- 
ner at Monmouth as to make Washington swear 
in a fashion intensely human. Israel Putnam, 
the fourth major-general, had a wide reputation 
for courage which he well upheld during the war, 
though a certain blunt insistence upon his own claims 
to rank and preeminence kept him in continual 
quarrels. 

Of the eight brigadiers the notable ones, of whom 
we shall read much, were Richard Montgomery, of 
New York and Nathaniel Greene, of Rhode Island. 
Horatio Gates was appointed adjutant-general. He 
was a Virginian whose service as an officer in the 
British army under Braddock should have made him 
a notable figure in the American service. But he be- 
came a political soldier, always intriguing against his 
superiors, and even trying to displace Washington. 
In the end he dropped into obscurity. 

Washington was commissioned, and started for 
Cambridge on horseback to take command of the army. 
The news of Bunker Hill had not yet reached Phila- 
delphia, but scarcely twenty miles out Washington met 
the courier who was bringing it. 

" Did the militia fight?" he asked before the mes- 



30 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

scnger could say more than that there had been a 
battle. 

Being told how they had fought, he said gravely, 
" Then the liberties of the country are safe," and 
rode on. 

Looking back with full knowledge of all that was 
done in those seven years of revolution it seems hard 
to believe with what incredulity men of high standing 
in the colonies regarded the prospect of the people 
conducting themselves like brave men and soldiers. 
They should have known better for constant struggle 
with the wilderness and the hostile forces of nature 
had strengthened the will of these Colonists, while re- 
peated Indian wars had inured them to the perils of 
battle. Most of them were or had been pioneers and 
to be one of the advance guard of civilization pre- 
supposes personal courage. The British found out 
soon enough that they had underestimated the personal 
bravery of the Americans and were frank enough in 
their admissions of it. Before the series of events that 
began with Lexington, General Gage was sufficiently 
contemptuous of American valor, but after Bunker 
Hill wrote to Lord Dartmouth, "The trials we have 
had show the rebels are not the despicable rabble too 
many have supposed them to be; and I find it owing 
to a military spirit, encouraged among them for a few 
years past, joined with an uncommon degree of zeal 
and enthusiasm, that they are otherwise." 

Among American leaders the same distrust of the 
bearing of the Colonials had been felt, as their exulta- 
tion, when Concord and Bunker Hill proved that 
farmers would fight, showed. *' I am glad of it," cried 
Patrick Henry, when he was told of the battle; ** a 
breach of our affections was needed to rouse the coun- 
try to action." And the shrewd old philosopher, Ben- 
jamin Franklin, forcasting the future from the event 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 31 

said, "Americans will fight! England has lost her 
colonies for ever." 

Arrived at Cambridge, Washington assumed com- 
mand of his army under that spreading elm on Cam- 
bridge Green that for more than a century has 
been shown to travelers as the " Washington Elm." 
Present, or on service in the works overlooking Boston 
were 17,215 officers and men out of an army, "on 
paper" of 20,242. Of the thirty-five regiments, twen- 
ty-six were from Massachusetts alone. The force was 
almost exactly equal to that of the British, but the 
latter were drilled, disciplined, armed with standard 
weapons, commanded by officers schooled in European 
campaigns, trained in the subordination so necessary 
to the soldier, and well provided with artillery. 

Washington's men had their high qualities. Their 
patriotism was unbounded. They were willing to 
fight, to suffer, to die, if need be for their country. 
But they were minded to do it their own way. Of 
discipline they knew nothing, and wanted to know no 
more. They saw no reason for eternal drilling, for 
daily shaving and keeping arms and accoutrements 
bright. Why, when the enemy seemed content in Bos- 
ton and a mere handful in the trenches could keep him 
from breaking out, those whose farms needed care 
could not go home subject to call, was hard for them 
to comprehend. All the same they were sound stuff 
to the backbone, and could march, and dig with the 
best of regulars, knew how to care for themselves, and 
with their long rifles — seven feet long as a rule — were 
deadly shots. Their courage was shown on a hundred 
fields. In a most readable book,* which is at the same 
time a real contribution to history, a New England 
writer describes two American privates : 

* " The Private Soldier Under Washington," by Charles Knowles 
Bolton; New York, 1902, 



32 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

*' Can you not see two of them now — Haines at 
Bemis Heights, astride the muzzle of a British brass 
twelve-pounder, ramming his bayonet into the thigh 
of a savage foe, recovering himself to parry the thrust 
of a second, and quick as a tiger, dashing the same 
bloody bayonet through his head; recovering again 
only to fall from the cannon, shot through the mouth 
and tongue; lying two nights on the battle field until 
thirst, hunger, and loss of blood overcome him, then 
in the ranks of the dead made ready for burial; and 
from all this recovering for three years more of service 
and a green, old age; or again that unknown daredevil 
whose swaying figure stood out upon the parapet of 
the entrenchments about Yorktown, brandishing his 
spade at every ball that burred about him, finally going 
to his death ' damning his soul If he would dodge.' " 

Out of such raw material Washington had to forge 
an army. Moreover, he had to replace it with a new 
army before it was half finished, for the terms of en- 
listment of the militia began to expire about the time 
he assumed command. He had to tighten the works 
about Boston, and be on the qui vive all the time for 
a sortie. He was short of cannon, of powder, and of 
men. Of the first two the enemy furnished the first 
supply. 

Ticonderoga, at the junction of Lake George and 
Lake Champlain in the colony of New York, was a 
fort on which the British government had spent some 
considerable money, and which was well armed and 
garrisoned. It held a vital point on the long water- 
way which, with but one portage, extended from the 
ocean at the mouth of the Hudson to the river St. 
Lawrence. Its walls of heavy masonry, erected there 
in a wilderness trodden only by the feet of trappers 
and occasional traders with the Indians, were fitted to 
withstand the fire of the ordinary artillery of that day, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 33 

and their ruined fragments still stand on the high bluff 
looking down upon the placid lake, which after wit- 
nessing the wars of the red men, the French, the British, 
and the Americans, has settled down as the placid path- 
way of peace and pleasure. The fort was well filled 
with cannon of different weights and calibres, precisely 
the weapons which the American forces most lacked. 
Indeed in all Massachusetts were but twenty-three small 
pieces of artillery, and of these five were lost at Bunker 
Hill. 

In April, 1775, before that battle. Captain Benedict 
Arnold had arrived at Cambridge with a company of 
volunteers from New Haven, Connecticut. He knew that 
Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, its neighbor, were 
but feebly garrisoned and that they contained a con- 
siderable store of cannon. On his suggestion tOt Wash- 
ington he was authorized to raise a force for the cap- 
ture of the forts, and was commissioned colonel — the 
beginning of a military career that was wholly bril- 
liant until it was suddenly snuffed out in a calamity of 
ignominy and disgrace. 

Arnold raised four hundred troops for his ex- 
pedition and set out across the country, going himself 
ahead of the main body of his troops with a com- 
paratively small party. Curiously enough the same 
purpose that animated him had occurred earlier in 
the mind of Captain Ethan Allen, of Vermont, 
whom Arnold found already on the eastern shore 
of Lake Champlain with a party of two hundred 
" Green Mountain Boys," bound on the same 
errand. The two joined forces, Arnold finally accept- 
ing second place as a volunteer, though he Insisted 
strenuously on being put in command. Ferrying their 
troops across the narrow lake, they held in restraint 
all country folk who might by any possibility carry a 
warning to the garrison. Through the dark night of 



34 STORY OFOURARMY 

May 8 they lurked In the forests that surrounded Fort 
Ticonderoga and just at dawn rushed to the attack, 
sounding the Indian warwhoop. It was not the first 
time that savage ullulation had rung among those hills, 
for the fort stood there as a British outpost against the 
Indians, to hold a spot won from the French and their 
savage allies at heavy cost of blood and treasure. 
Now the commander of the fort supposed all was 
peaceful about him. If any rumors of the disturbances 
about Boston had reached his ears he supposed them 
to be merely local troubles. So on this May night the 
garrison slept, the great gate was closed indeed, but 
the wicket was open and through this the assailants 
rushed, the sleepy sentinel vanishing as he heard their 
advancing shouts. But few shots were fired. The 
few defenders on duty threw down their arms while 
most were taken in their cots. Rushing to the com- 
mandant's quarters, Ethan Allen beat thunderously on 
the door with his sword hilt. Captain Delaplace came 
to the door clad in the unmilitary trappings of sleep. 

"What does this mean? What do you want?" 
he demanded. 

*' Surrender," cried Allen, " we are in possession of 
the fort." 

** By what authority?" 

" In the name of the great Jehovah and the Con- 
tinental Congress." 

There was nothing for it but surrender, and Dela- 
place yielded. He knew nothing of any war. "He 
wandered about as one dazed," wrote a soldier of 
Allen's command, " repeating, ' What does this mean? ' 
over and over again." 

With the fort the Americans captured the captain, 
a lieutenant, forty-eight privates and a number of 
women and children, all of whom were sent to Albany. 
What was more important was the capture of nearly 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 35 

two hundred cannon. Of these the lighter pieces were 
sent at once to Washington at Cambridge, while the 
heavier ones were held until the cold and snow of 
winter would make the roads passable, when they too 
were sent thither to aid in driving Gage out of Boston. 
The fort had cost England in the various expeditions 
for its establishment something like eight million 
pounds sterling. It was taken by the Americans in 
ten minutes without the loss of a man. Within a day 
or two the neighboring British works at Crown Point 
and the harbor of Skenesboro were taken by Allen's 
forces and the waterway to Canada was in possession 
of the Americans. 

The authenticity of the swashbuckling phrase in 
which Allen demanded the surrender has been ques- 
tioned on the reasonable grounds that the Continental 
Congress had never met, and did not meet until six 
hours after the assault, and that the dashing Green 
Mountain soldier notoriously did not believe in 
Jehovah. But the story rests on Allen's own narrative 
and the phrase is too deeply graven on American his- 
tory ever to be obliterated. 

While drawing the lines tighter about the beleaguered 
British in Boston, Washington as commander-in-chief 
had forced upon his attention the need of activity In 
other directions If from a local revolt the American 
uprising was to be developed into a true war of Inde- 
pendence — for after Bunker Hill men began to speak 
of a separation from the mother country as they never 
had talked before. A little study of the map of the 
colonies, or a present day map of the United States will 
show the geographical facts which determined the" 
whole plan of the British attack upon the colonies. 
England controlled the ocean, the bays, the harbors, 
and the navigable rivers absolutely. Even then her 
navy was supreme upon the Seven Seas. The Colonists 



36 STORY OF OURARMY 

controlled a strip of land bordering the ocean and 
reaching on an average fifty miles into the interior. 
Boston was in the hands of a British garrison. New 
York, Philadelphia, and Charleston were still held by 
the Americans though the cities were full of Tories, 
as the sympathizers with King George were called, and 
it needed only for a few British men-of-war to drop 
anchor in the harbor to make of any one of these towns 
a British stronghold. Indeed, very shortly after 
Washington cooped him up in Boston, Gage wrote to 
London urging that he be allowed to abandon that 
city and take his troops by water to New York. In 
those days water transportation was everything. Rail- 
roads there were none, and the ordinary highways were 
quagmires in wet weather. But nature had provided 
several broad waterways from that sea, which was 
ever Britain's broad domain, to the heart of the Colo- 
nists' country. 

One was the path by water up the St. Lawrence past 
the towering heights on which stand the town and 
citadel of Quebec, to the point at which the St. John's 
enters that river. The St. John's in turn offered a way 
to a point within a short portage of the head of Lake 
Champlain, which with the connecting Lake George, 
extends south to the headwaters of the Hudson. This 
water route from sea to sea was the objective of almost 
a continuous campaign by the British throughout the 
war, but at no time did they control it. They came 
nearest to its possession at the critical time when dis- 
covery foiled Arnold's treacherous purpose of selling 
to the enemy the fort at West Point, which held the 
water gap in the highlands of the Hudson against all 
comers. 

To control this northeastern waterway, Washington 
determined to invade Canada. Word reached him 
that General Carleton, the British commander, in that 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 37 

province had but a few hundred men under arms, and 
that in Quebec was not a single regular soldier. Both 
Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold were clamoring for 
permission to command an invading expedition. Allen 
wanted to follow the line of the St. John's River and 
fall upon Montreal. Arnold, who had left the Ticon- 
deroga region in a passion because of a fancied slight, 
wished to march from the upper waters of the Kenne- 
bec and attack Quebec. Washington hesitated for 
some time. Canada was a distinct province. Her 
people largely French had shown no sympathy with 
the New England revolt. Invasion of their territory 
might positively estrange them — make them a hostile 
instead of a neutral force. As it turned out it did have 
precisely this effect. Probably the two soldiers so eager 
to lead the expedition were not all to Washington's 
liking, for with all their gallantry they were insubordi- 
nate and animated by selfish ambitions. 

In the end Washington agreed to both expeditions, 
but denied to Allen command of the expedition against 
Montreal. That was conferred upon General Philip 
Schuyler, but upon his falling ill the actual command 
devolved on General Richard Montgomery, an Irish- 
man who had served with Wolfe against Quebec. 
Allen characteristically enough made a bold dash, with- 
out orders and with an insufficient force against Mon- 
treal, but failed. After losing about forty men he was 
captured with the rest of his command and sent to 
England a prisoner. After two years of captivity, 
he was released and, returning to military service, be- 
came a brigadier-general in the Continental Army. As 
notable for bluster as for bravery, tenacious of fancied 
rights and intolerant of rivals, he achieved by his pic- 
turesque qualities a popularity which his record as a 
soldier did not justify, and through an indiscreet cor- 



38 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

respondence with the enemy came near being branded 
forever as a traitor — a fate which his true patriotism 
did not deserve. 

General Montgomery meanwhile found that Mon- 
treal and Canada were not to be taken by mere dash. 
Fifty days were spent in reducing St. Johns, a village 
at the northern end of Lake Champlain, where the 
British erected defences that barred the waterway to 
Canada. When it fell a luckless chance aided the 
escape of the British General Carleton, who with a 
considerable force went down the St. Lawrence to 
Quebec, arriving there in season to dash American 
hopes. Montreal delayed Montgomery only a brief 
time. Quebec with its beetling citadel was the im- 
portant objective for him. But it was the important 
point for the British as well, and having to defend one 
of the two towns General Carleton hurried to save the 
more important one. 

Meanwhile General Arnold with about twelve hundred 
men was fighting his way northward through the Maine 
woods toward Quebec. The enemies he had to en- 
counter were not human but were more formidable. 
The Indians were indifferent or friendly, and there 
were no British or Tories about to offer battle. But 
there were no roads. That portion of the route which 
lay along the course of the upper Kennebec was cov- 
ered by dragging heavy bateaux, laden with stores, 
against a cold rushing current in which the men waded 
waist deep, over rocky bottoms. At points were low 
falls and rapids impossible of passage for the boats, 
which had to be hauled out over the steep granite 
banks, boats, stores, and wearied men all suffering in 
the process. The river shrunk to a purling brook and 
the long portage over the highlands to the headwaters 
of the River Chaudiere, down which the expedition was 
to drift to the St. Lawrence, began. This was the most 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 39 

arduous portion of the march. Great bogs barred 
their way in which men sank to their shoulders and 
were with difficulty drawn out. The forests were 
thick and the undergrowth so dense that paths had to 
be cut with axes and the clothing and bodies of the 
men were torn. Poisonous gnats filled the air in 
clouds. Much of the path had to be covered two or 
three times as the men struggling forward to the camp- 
ing place would have to go back over the path thus 
broken to bring up the provisions. Food failed them. 
They ate dogs, candles, roots, and berries, some 
poisonous of which they fell sick. Some boiled their 
moccasins for soup, others ate shaving soap, pomatum, 
and salve. Many of the exhausted or sick who fell 
behind perished miserably in the forest. The whole 
rear guard, when the march was all 'but ended, gave 
up the fight and returned to the Kennebec and so to 
the coast. To find the headwaters of the stream which 
was to take them to the St. Lawrence was no easy task. 
In those impenetrable woods they might be within a 
few hundred yards of it yet not discover it. Much 
of the time it rained furiously, but as the season ad- 
vanced the rain turned to snow, and the ponds they 
had continually to pass froze over, so that the men 
had to break the ice with the butts of their muskets to 
permit the passage of their few remaining boats. In 
eighty-three miles along the Dead River the boats had 
to be taken out and carried seventeen times. Out of 
220 miles on the whole journey the boats had been 
hauled through the water i8o miles and carried bodily 
40 miles. Under this strain the boats, like the men, 
were going to pieces fast. At last, with only three 
days' provisions left, Arnold set out with a small party 
on a swift march in search of succor. He found some 
friendly French settlements and bought lavishly of 
food. When the fresh provisions reached the 



40 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

famished soldiers in the rear they gorged themselves 
so ravenously that many died. 

They were now near the end of what was the most 
exacting and toilsome march of revolutionary days. 
But though progress became easier the men were too 
greatly fatigued to hasten. The last thirty miles took 
ten days, though so slight were the natural obstacles 
that they should have been passed in two. Before 
starting out it was estimated that the march from what 
is now Augusta on the Kennebec to the south bank of 
the St. Lawrence would take twenty days. In fact 
it took fifty. Starting with nearly 1,200 men the St. 
Lawrence was reached with a force of about 750. All 
the boats had been lost or destroyed and to cross the 
river Arnold had to secure some thirty birch bark 
canoes from the Indians. He had no artillery, for it 
had been known from the first that cannon could not 
be drawn through those dense northern woods. But 
many of his small arms were lost, and his stock of 
powder was low. To add to the dismal state of the 
shattered force gazing across the broad river at the 
towering ramparts and comfortable town of Quebec, 
a cold sleety rain set in, and a sharp wind whistled in 
the trees for two days. Those who cling to the 
ancient superstitions and believe in " a Jonah," cannot 
fail to note that the expedition was commanded by 
Benedict Arnold and had among its subalterns Aaron 
Burr — the two names bearing the most sinister brand 
in United States history. 

Notwithstanding the dire state of his command, 
Arnold made shift to get across the river, landing at 
Wolfe's Cove, where about sixteen years earlier the 
commander of that name had landed to win Quebec 
from the French. That he crossed at all shows that 
the English on the two war vessels anchored in the 
stream were wholly blind to their duty. Yet all 






'f\f.r ^ ^ 





Bv/ Jl 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 41 

crossed in safety and clambered up the path by which 
Wolfe had reached the Plains of Abraham. Once 
there what was there to do? Quebec was surrounded 
by stout walls, some remnants of which are still stand- 
ing. While Arnold had been struggling in the woods 
and rapids of Maine the city had been reenforced 
until its defenders outnumbered the besiegers and had 
withal the advantage of protection and an ample sup- 
ply of ammunition — the Americans were reduced to 
five rounds each. Under such conditions there was 
no hope of success in an assault. Arnold tried at first 
to win his point by a characteristic game of bluff. He 
paraded his troops and in boastful terms called on the 
British commander to surrender, but was properly 
laughed at. In the end he withdrew his bedraggled 
force to the Point aux Trembles, there to await Mont- 
gomery. A letter had been dispatched to the latter 
urging haste, but the Indian runner to whom it was 
entrusted was faithless and' delivered it to the British. 
Montgomery, meanwhile, at the head of an insub- 
ordinate body of troops, was making his way from 
Montreal toward Quebec. Only three hundred were 
willing to follow him. Some pleaded illness, a great 
number dropped out because the time of their enlist- 
ment was past, others simply deserted. It was then 
winter and the hardships of a Canadian December 
told on the devotion of the soldiers. The progress 
down the St. Lawrence to Quebec was, however not 
difficult. It is curious to note that on his arrival 
Montgomery was particularly impressed with the 
soldiery quality of Arnold's men. " There is a style 
of discipline among them," he wrote, " much superior 
to what I have been used to see in this campaign. He 
(General Arnold) is active, intelligent, and enter- 
prising." It is rather pathetic in the light of his later 
disgrace to read now of the high opinion formed of 



42 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Benedict Arnold in the earlier days of the Revolution 
by all the American commanders from Washington 
down. 

Montgomery, though a gallant soldier, put far too 
much faith in the theory that the residents of the town 
were friendly to the American cause, and he wasted 
much time in attempting to induce them to treachery. 
Letters attached to arrows were shot over the walls 
promising reward to any inhabitant who would throw 
open the great gates. A woman was smuggled in on 
some pretext bearing letters to prominent merchants 
telling of the profitable patronage which would follow 
the American entrance. But the letters were carried 
to Carleton, the woman was cast into jail, and the few 
inhabitants who showed signs of disaffection were ex- 
pelled from the city by the British commander, who 
showed himself both vigilant and courageous. As a 
matter of fact there was not then, or later, any con- 
siderable sympathy with the American cause in Quebec 
or Lower Canada. The greater part of the inhabitants 
were French, who, if they resented British rule, thought 
the Americans no less alien. They were Catholics 
little fitted to fraternize with New England puritan- 
ism. Having been under English rule but sixteen 
years they had not learned devotion to those principles 
of liberty for which the Americans were fighting. As 
the Revolution progressed thousands of Tories from 
the colonies sought refuge in Canada, or more particu- 
larly in Halifax, and laid the foundation of a political 
society quite as British as England itself. 

Disappointed in his effort to cajole the defenders 
into surrender, Montgomery settled down to a siege. 
It was a poor moment for such an effort and the army 
was ill-equipped for it. The ground was frozen five 
feet deep and the few intrenching tools the besiegers 
possessed could make little impression upon it. A 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 43 

novel bastion was begun about four hundred yards 
before one of the gates. Its framework was of walls 
of timber and brush; between snow was packed hard 
and water poured over all, making a smooth redoubt 
of glistening ice. It looked formidable enough, but 
the first shot from the enemy's guns that struck it shat- 
tered the walls like glass, wounding several men and 
endangering Montgomery, who happened to be inspect- 
ing the work. It was abandoned promptly, ice prov- 
ing as poor a defence in the frozen north as did years 
later cotton bales in the tropic fields about New 
Orleans. 

Three weeks passed in misery for the besieging 
troops. Bitter cold, gnawing hunger and to cap all, 
an epidemic of smallpox wrought havoc in the Ameri- 
can ranks. The men lost spirit, murmured loudly, 
and signs of mutiny spread. Three companies of 
Arnold's division flatly refused to serve longer under 
him. Individual desertions reduced the force to 750; 
less than half the number Carleton had snugly en- 
sconced behind the walls of Quebec. Desperate as 
the chance appeared, Montgomery had no choice but 
to order an assault or retire ignominiously from the 
field. 

The city of Quebec is in two parts. The older, a 
network of narrow, tortuous streets, and crowded 
houses which even today gives it the air of an old- 
world town, lies huddled between the foot of beetling 
cliffs and the rushing St. Lawrence. The upper town 
on the Heights nestles at the foot of the citadel and 
was in 1775 surrounded by a stout wall, parts of which 
still endure. Montgomery planned his attack for the 
night of December 31, 1775, thus: 

His army on the Plains of Abraham was to be 
divided into three parts. Two divisions, under Mont- 
gomery and Arnold were to descend the steep cliffs at 



44 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

different points, and attack the lower town from di- 
rectly opposite directions. Meeting in the centre 
they were to move on the upper town by the roadway 
unblocked by any wall. The division left on the 
Heights was to make a fierce show of assaulting St. 
John's gate, to engage the enemy's attention there, thus 
giving the real attack of Montgomery and Arnold a 
better opportunity. 

It was two o'clock in the morning when the troops 
moved. The snow was falling heavily and lay heaped 
on the rugged pathway by which the Americans were 
to descend to the riverbank. It had been planned 
that signal rockets should give the order for a simul- 
taneous attack of all three bodies, but this failed. 
Montgomery got first into action. At the foot of 
Cape Diamond where a metal slab still marks the spot 
of his death, he found progress barred by a stout 
palisade but as this was undefended a breach was soon 
made. Montgomery was first through into the black- 
ness jbeyond. Faintly outlined in the night, about 
fifty yards away, stood a dark and sinister blockhouse. 
On the one side towered the crags; on the other rushed 
the icy river. No light gleamed from the menacing 
castle. It might be deserted. Fearlessly Montgom- 
ery pressed forward, crying to the New York troops 
behind him, " Men of New York, you will not fear to 
follow where your general leads. Push on, brave boys, 
and Quebec is ours ! " At the words, as though they 
were a signal, the blockhouse sprang to malignant life, 
and spat out jets of fire and streams of lead. Mont- 
gomery fell dead at the first fire, his two aides falling 
by his side. His force fell back in confusion, and 
though rallied, advanced no more to the attack. 

At the other end of the lower town Arnold was 
fighting no less gallantly, and meeting an equally des- 
perate resistance. So narrow was the path that the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 45 

Americans had to advance in single file. Arnold led 
the way with thirty riflemen; next, an artillery under 
Captain Lamb with one field-piece which owing to the 
depth of the snow was never put in action; finally 
Morgan with riflemen and scaling ladders. Into the 
dark and narrow streets of the town the column wound 
its way, meeting no resistance until a two-gun battery 
was encountered. Arnold fell at the first fire badly 
wounded. Morgan taking command, fought on, 
taking the battery and fighting his way through the 
tangle of streets, from the house windows of which 
half-clad citizens poured down a harassing fire. A 
second barricade was reached stretching across from 
the cliffs to the river. Here the American riflemen 
dashed up, firing through the embrasures at the defend- 
ers while scaling ladders were planted on the redoubt. 
British forces rushed down from the hill, and a fire 
from every fortified point was turned upon the Ameri- 
cans crowded in the narrow street. 

For a time they wavered, but finally in a gallant 
rush carried the position. Lamb, the artillery com- 
mander, fell with his whole lower jaw shot away. The 
loss among the men was heavy, but Morgan prepared 
for a rush upon the upper town. By this time, how- 
ever, the British had discovered that the attack upon 
St. John's gate was a mere ruse. The Americans 
there had been easily beaten back and the British forces 
were left free to rush down the cliffs and take Morgan 
in the flank and rear. The town was awake. Alarm 
bells were clanging out from the cathedral on the hill 
and the lesser churches by the riverside. Cannon 
roared from the citadel and the barricades 'in the 
streets. Citizens flocked to aid the defenders though 
the night was still so black that one could scarce tell 
friend from foe. Morgan's rear guard was cut off 
and compelled to surrender. Almost destitute of ofli- 



46 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

cers he took refuge in a stone warehouse and defended 
himself gallantly though hopelessly. With day came 
the news of Montgomery's death and American defeat 
all along the line and Morgan yielded to the inevitable, 
but with the honors of war full upon him. 

It had been a hard fought battle. The Americans 
lost 1 60 killed and wounded; the British only 20. 
The Americans lost Montgomery, slain, Arnold and 
Lamb badly wounded. Montgomery's two aides fell 
with him. " This will insure me a decent burial," one 
of them. Captain Cheesman, had said with a laugh as 
he thrust some gold in his pocket before going out on 
his last service. The British recognized the gallantry 
of the attack and gave to Montgomery's remains a 
soldier's funeral within the walls, whence they were 
removed forty-two years later to their present resting 
place in St. Paul's churchyard in New York. 

With reenforcements and repeated changes of com- 
manders, the Americans' kept up a futile siege of 
Quebec for months, only to abandon it when the break- 
up of winter opened the St. Lawrence to British ves- 
sels. Then the troops were withdrawn and Canada 
abandoned. That New Year's battle was big with 
importance to the world. Had it been won Canada 
would to-day be part of the LTnited States. Had Mont- 
gomery lived the battle might not have been won, but 
at any rate the struggling colonies would have been 
saved a gallant and an able general. Had the ball 
which struck Arnold's knee reached his brain instead 
he would have left a fame like Montgomery's in place 
of making of his name a synonym for traitor and a 
by-word of infamy. 

Meanwhile Washington was molding his motley 
forces into an armv, and drawing more tightly his lines 
about Boston. The cannon from Ticonderoga had 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 47 

arrived and that gallant ranger of the seas, Captain 
John Manley, had furnished the troops with a store of 
captured powder. Congress, too, had set up saltpetre 
and gunpowder works, and was preparing for a long 
war. For weapons, other than great guns, no provi- 
sion was needed. Every farmer had his rifle and pow- 
der horn hanging over his chimney-piece and had but 
to take it down to be equipped for war. Good 
weapons these were too; trustworthy at three hundred 
yards while the British muskets bungled at half the 
distance. Uniforms were few. Washington, being 
the richest man of his day in the colonies and punctil- 
ious about his appearance, clad himself in a blue coat 
with buff lapels, buff riding breeches, knee boots, and 
a cocked hat. One or two of the New England mili- 
tia companies wore a sort of uniform fabricated by 
the farmwives at home, but one such soldier tells how, 
at Lexington, they were fain to wear their ordinary 
clothing over their gay trappings lest they be too con- 
spicuous. The hunting shirt, a sort of smock belted 
at the waist and worn outside the trousers, was the 
favorite garment and Washington in a proclamation 
urged all the soldiers to garb themselves thus. 
Lafayette, who came to this country shortly after the 
British had been expelled from Boston, wrote of the 
patriotic army in this wise: 

" About eleven thousand men, ill-armed and still 
worse clothed, presented a strange spectacle. Their 
clothes were parti-colored and many of them were 
almost naked. The best clad wore hunting shirts, 
large gray linen (cotton) coats which were much used 
in Carolina. . . . They were always arranged 
in two lines, the smallest men in the first line." 

No particular effort was made to instruct them in 
military tactics. In fact not until Baron von Steuben 
came over from Prussia did any officer take pains to 



48 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

drill them in the manual of arms. Perhaps that was 
one cause of their strength. Like the Boers In South 
Africa they thought more of picking off the enemy than 
of keeping their own lines straight, and as for prac- 
tising the " goose step," even now beloved of the 
German drill sergeant, the man who sought to enforce 
it on the Colonials would have had a counter-revolution 
on his hands. At first the officers had no distinctive 
regalia, but at last cockades of ribbon were ordered for 
them. Sons and Daughters of the Revolution who are 
cherishing portraits of ancestors in cocked hats, smart 
surtouts and epaulets must credit these adornments to 
the artist rather than the tailor. Nor was there then 
any Patriot flag regularly adopted. Some regiments 
carried a yard of bunting showing a coiled rattlesnake 
with the legend, " Don't tread on me ! " but the adop- 
tion of a snake as an emblem of liberty was not widely 
popular and the flags disappeared before the sneers 
of the Loyalists. 

Within Boston were about 12,000 troops, all regu- 
lars. Why they did not sally forth and cut to pieces 
the ill-equipped American recruits is still one of the 
puzzles of the war. Some say General Howe was 
unnerved by the slaughter of Bunker Hill. Others 
that he secretly sympathized with the patriot cause. 
At any rate he gave Washington the thing he needed 
most next to powder — time to discipline his army and 
perfect his lines. True, the British kept up a scatter- 
ing fire of musketry and cannon against the American 
lines, but it was so little effective that the death of an 
American by a British projectile seemed as rare as one 
from a lightning stroke. As the Americans held all 
the country about Boston the beleaguered troops and 
citizens began to suffer sorely for food. Eggs cost 
more than $2.50 a dozen, geese ten shillings, and 
chickens five shillings each; beef and pork nearly 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 49 

thirty cents a pound. These prices sound high now, 
but the ordinary high purchasing power of money at 
that time made them doubly exorbitant. The British 
made raids on the surrounding country for more sup- 
plies, but were harried on each expedition by American 
riflemen whose vigilance was as admirable as their dis- 
regard for discipline was scandalous. Once in a while 
a coaster from Newfoundland would slip in with a 
cargo of provisions but such supplies barely met the 
demands of the people rich enough to pay dearly for 
them. The troops and the common people were fed 
on salt provisions and the inevitable outbreak of scurvy 
was the result. While unwilling to attack the Ameri- 
cans in their trenches the British ravished the unpro- 
tected villages along the coast and the burning of 
Falmouth, the bombardment of Bristol, and pillaging 
of Jamestown, opposite Newport, were occurences that 
injured their perpetrators by arousing the bitter resent- 
ment of the Americans. Washington himself would 
have liked to assault Boston; to put to the sharp test 
of battle the issue between his army and that of Howe. 
But two councils of his generals voted against such 
action, and, as the outcome proved, wisely. 

So wore on the winter. As March approached the 
cannon hauled over the mountains from Ticonderoga 
arrived, the store of powder was replenished, the places 
of men whose terms of enlistment had expired were 
filled. It was time to do more than sit and watch the 
captive British slowly starve. Accordingly it was de- 
termined to seize Dorchester Heights, an eminence 
that commanded Boston from the south. The ground 
was still frozen hard on March 2, 1776, when this 
movement was begun and in order to cover the noise 
of the artillery and supply trains moving to the 
Heights, a fierce cannonade was opened on Boston. It 
did no injury to the city but did divert the British 



50 STORYOFOURARMY 

attention from what was actually being done. When 
morning broke the new works were there in plain sight 
of the British. Howe was perplexed.^ "There must 
have been 12,000 men engaged in this great work," 
he wrote. As a matter of fact there were less than 
1,200. Washington expected that Howe would im- 
mediately attack the works which made Boston un- 
tenable and commanded a great part of the harbor as 
well. To meet such an attack, he prepared for a 
counter attack on the town, and was bitterly disap- 
pointed when the British general failed to move. 
Howe did in fact plan an assault for the 5th of March 
—the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. " Re- 
member it is the 5th of March and avenge the death 
of your brethren ! " said Washington to his men when 
expecting the attack. " It will be another Bunker Hill 
affair or worse," said the people who lined the streets 
in Boston as the British marched out to the boats 
which were to take them to the point of attack. Night 
and an ebb tide delayed them. Meanwhile both sides 
kept up an artillery duel noisy, but fruitless. " I went 
to bed about twelve," wrote Mrs. Adams, of the 
family of patriots, " and rose again a little after one. 
I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engage- 
ment; the rattle of the windows, the jar of the house; 
the continual roar of 24-pounders, and the bursting of 
shells give us such ideas and realize a scene to us of 
which we could scarcely form any conception." Ter- 
rifying as it was to the good lady, it was only the noise 
of war — carnage there was none. In the end a savage 
storm delayed the British advance by water until the 
American works became, in Howe's opinion, im- 
pregnable. . TT » 
Washington was admittedly disappointed m Howe s 
failure to attack. Though general of the army for 
months he had taken part in no battle. Since Bunker 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 51 

Hill all had been dig, drill, and discipline, and his 
soldierly nature cried aloud for action. 

No one can study the history of the Revolution 
without being convinced that the caution for which 
Washington was sometimes reproached, and which 
withal was the means of his saving the nation, was less 
natural than acquired through stress of untoward cir- 
cumstances. In battle he more than once risked him- 
self more freely than should a commanding officer, and 
in all the operations about Boston he was with difficulty 
restrained from staking all on the issue of battle. 

At this time no assault was needed. Having lin- 
gered but briefly in New England's capital after the 
American guns first peered down from Dorchester and 
Nook's Hill, on the 17th of March with all his troops 
and about one thousand Loyalist citizens of the town, 
Howe took to his fleet of warships and transports. 
The Americans moving first upon the redoubt at Bun- 
ker Hill, found it defended by two or three dummy 
sentinels made of wood. Approaching the city from 
the other direction they met no opposition, nor any sign 
of a Redcoat. The British had fled and in all the 
American colonies there was left no regular soldier of 
King George ashore. 

Dropping down the bay to Nantasket Roads Howe 
lay at anchor for several days, then sailed for Halifax. 
All his operations since the day of Bunker Hill went 
far to justify the bitter attacks made upon him in Eng- 
land. He was accused of being a coward who dared 
not engage in battle, or a traitor only too ready to 
see the American cause triumph. What was probably 
the fact, as shown throughout his whole military 
career, was that he did, like the Whig party in England, 
sympathize to some degree with the Colonists and clung 
too long to the hope that by avoiding measures of 
extreme severity he might still bring the Americans to 



52 STORY OFOURARMY 

peaceful acceptance of British authority. As long as 
he remained in command in America this effort to pave 
the way for peaceful negotiations was apparent in his 
every act and made his military operations notable for 
indecision and the rejection of chances to end the up- 
rising at a stroke. 

In the Boston operations he showed the utmost 
weakness in not striking Washington at the moment 
when the American army was half-formed and less 
than half-armed. Washington himself in more than 
one letter expressed his amazement that he should act 
thus. When the British sailed they took away about 
eleven thousand soldiers and one thousand Loyalist 
refugees. They had ten days in Boston to complete 
their preparations for the evacuation but, nevertheless, 
left behind a prodigious quantity of provisions and 
military stores of vast value to Washington's army. 
True, much powder had been thrown into the bay, and 
most of the cannon were made useless by breaking the 
trunnions or spiking. But what was left seemed a 
treasure to the half-clad Continentals. Finally when 
Howe did leave Massachusetts waters it was for 
Halifax. Had he sailed to New York or Newport he 
could easily have occupied either city and his movement 
would have been considered a mere change of base. 
Going to far-off Halifax was rightly construed as a 
retreat. When heard of in England it caused a storm 
of criticism, while in the colonies it inspired an en- 
thusiastic confidence in the American cause that bore 
fruit a few months later in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. 



CHAPTER III 

The New York Campaign— Operations in New Jersey — Battles of 
Trenton and Princeton— Creation of a Regular Army. 

Washington was endowed with an extraordinary 
faculty for swift action, and an equal self-restraint 
which enabled him to rest in seeming inaction until the 
precise moment for striking a blow should arrive. 
When the British sails disappeared down the tortuous 
channel of Boston harbor no one in the American 
trenches could tell where that fleet of more than fifty 
ships with eleven thousand fighting men would go. 
Military reason pointed to New York as its objective. 
General Schuyler was there with a few battalions, but 
the city and the bay were practically undefended. So, 
hardly waiting for the British ships to be hull down 
below the eastern horizon, Washington began marshal- 
ling his men for the march to New York. In all he 
had fit for duty rather more than twenty thousand men. 
About seven thousand of these were Massachusetts 
militia who were dismissed to their homes. Five reg- 
iments were started at once on the march for New 
York, five were left to garrison the town, and Wash- 
ington with the remainder started southward three 
weeks after the British evacuation. 

New York was not then the metropolis of America. 
Philadelphia was bigger, and Boston almost equalled 
it in population. But it had a military importance 
greater than any other city, for it was at the southern 
end of that waterway of which the northeastern termi- 
nus is in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Arnold's failure 
at Quebec gave the British control of the St. Lawrence 

53 



54 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

and it was only to be expected that they would soon 
fight their way along Lakes Champlain and George to 
the headquarters of the Hudson. Could they control 
that stream to its mouth they would have the rebellious 
territory cut in two and could subdue either section at 
pleasure. As a matter of fact they did in time get 
control of the whole stream save at West Point, and 
only the timely discovery of Arnold's treachery saved 
that point to the Patriot arms. 

New York itself was quite incapable of defence by 
the Americans. The foe had absolute control of the 
sea, and to hold the island city against the fleet which 
Great Britain could muster against it would have been 
an impossible task. Washington so thought, and con- 
sidered seriously destroying the city altogether, so that 
on their arrival there the British should find only a 
ruined town and a deserted country-side, instead of a 
flourishing city to serve as a base for operations against 
the surrounding colonies. The city was undefended 
at his coming and the defences he laid out proved im- 
potent. A large and active portion of the inhabitants 
were Tories who made the British welcome on their 
arrival, and throughout the Revolution plotted against 
the American cause. 

While the American youth has been taught to hate 
the very word " tory," it must not be forgotten that 
in England there were those who sympathized with the 
Americans, as we had amongst us loyal subjects of 
King George. After Lexington five hundred pounds 
sterling were raised in the mother country for the relief 
of the " embattled farmers." Samuel Rogers, an 
English poet and banker, tells that in his childhood his 
father leading in family prayers besought aid for the 
Americans in the trenches before Boston. 

History has shown that from every point of view, 
save the political one, the destruction of New York by 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 55 

the Americans would have been a telling blow to the 
British cause from the very first. But conditions made 
it politically inadvisable. New York had been no 
leader in the revolutionary activities of the land. Bos- 
ton to the north and Charleston in the south had taken 
up the struggle earlier and pressed it with more vigor. 
Yet to destroy New York would have been to depress 
the country beyond measure. Some of the Massachu- 
setts men in the Continental Congress did indeed urge 
this act of Spartan severity — perhaps as Artemus Ward 
was later willing to put down the rebellion if he had 
to sacrifice all his wife's relations. But Washington 
finally determined not only to spare the city but to 
defend it as long as possible. The latter part of this 
resolution cost him dear. 

Even while Washington was marching from Boston 
to New York the British expedition for the capture of 
the latter city was afloat. England by this time had 
concluded that there was something more than a riot 
in the colonies, that the farmers would fight, and that 
preparations must be made for an actual war. Late 
in October, 1775, Parliament provided for an army of 
fifty-five thousand men and twelve thousand sailors in ad- 
dition to those already employed afloat or ashore. Of 
these twelve thousand were then cooped up in Boston. 
But where to get the men was the puzzle. English- 
men do not like the trade of the soldier. That dislike, 
inherited by the Americans, has kept our regular army 
down to insignificant proportions. So George III 
and his ministers, unable to enlist men at home, and 
being denied the aid of compulsory military service, 
were reduced to buying men abroad, just as in the Boer 
war more than a century later England bought our 
Missouri mules for South African service. 

For a time the market for mercenaries was bad. 
Catherine of Russia diplomatically refused to sell any 



S6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of her subjects for food for cannon, though quite ready 
to use them for such purpose herself. Holland was 
happy to rout out a few thousand men, but only on the 
proviso that they should not be sent out of Europe. 
Frederick the Great roared with disgust when asked 
for some of his troops, and even refused the use of 
German ports to the Brunswickers and Hessians whom 
King George finally bought from the petty princelings 
of Germany. The employment of these hired soldiers 
— who by the way fought very badly — further em- 
bittered the colonies against England. 

When Washington had gathered into New York 
every company he could command, he had a scant 
seventeen thousand men, of whom barely ten thousand 
were fit for duty. On Staten Island the British flag 
waved over a camp of thirty-one thousand men, and a 
great supporting fleet floated in the Narrows. The 
fleet alone was sufficient to assure British victory, for 
the situation of New York is such that every point of 
the city as it then existed could have been searched with 
shells from the bay and the rivers, while an effective 
blockade would have starved out the defenders in a 
few weeks. But Sir William Howe felt that his pres- 
tige at home depended on a successful battle, while 
Washington, well aware of the futility of resistance, 
saw that all he could do to delay the British occupation 
would be well done. For Carleton was pressing down 
the line of Lake George and Lake Champlain from 
Canada, and if Howe could accomplish a junction with 
him by ascending the Hudson the territory of the colo- 
nies would be cut in twain. 

By way of preparing for defence works were thrown 
up on the western end of Long Island, and at various 
points on Manhattan Island as far north as Kings- 
bridge. Howe had the inestimable advantage of su- 
periority in numbers and the initiative. It was for 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 57 

him to strike and for Washington to guess where the 
blow would be delivered. Having a fleet Howe might 
have landed at the Battery and swept northward. Or 
he could have landed at Spuyten Duyvil, at the far 
northern end of Manhattan, penning the American 
army between the two rivers and the bay. Or he 
might ferry his troops across the Narrows to Long 
Island and march upon Brooklyn, taking possession of 
Brooklyn Heights near what is now Wall Street. 
Those heights dominated New York as the hills of 
Roxbury controlled Boston, and in taking this plan of 
campaign Howe merely imitated the American tactics 
that had driven him out of the Massachusetts city. 

Washington had nothing but intuition to guide him 
in preparing to meet Howe's attack, but that his esti- 
mate of his enemy was shrewd was indicated by the 
fact that he sent the greater part of his army over to 
Long Island and stationed them in trenches along the 
crest of Brooklyn Heights. Some detachments he sent 
out to cover the roads leading to the Heights, but this 
turned out to be a strategic blunder. The advance 
guard was too small to hold the enemy, but it was too 
big to lose. Lost it was, however, and with it Fort 
Putnam, now called Fort Greene. The line of defence 
is now preserved in Prospect Park and marked with a 
boulder bearing a suitable tablet. In this first disas- 
ter of the New York campaign the American loss was 
970 killed and wounded and 1,077 captured — a heavy 
toll to be taken out of a total force of about 8,000. 
The British loss was 400. 

This was Howe's golden moment. Fully half of 
Washington's effective army was intrenched along the 
Heights. Though their works were strong they were 
no match for the forty cannon and the nearly twenty 
thousand men under Howe's command. Back of them 
a steep declivity sloped down to the rushing East 



58 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

River, notorious for the force of its tides. An attack 
in force would have driven the Americans into the 
river, or compelled their surrender. Such a disaster 
might even have ended the Patriot cause. 

But instead of pushing his advantage Howe sat down 
to rest and began preparations for a siege. At the 
first news of the defeat of Putnam, Washington rushed 
to the scene with reenforcements and began strengthen- 
ing his works as though he intended to fight there. A 
brief survey of the field convinced him that an effort to 
hold the position would be risking too much on the 
doubtful issue of an unequal battle. Accordingly he 
began preparations to move his army back to New 
York, and did actually so withdraw it without leaving 
a man behind. On the second night after the battle, 
August 29, he put his eight thousand men into flat 
boats, and in the very face of a hostile fleet ferried 
them across to Manhattan Island. Brooklyn was lost, 
New York was doomed to fall into the hands of the 
British, but the army was saved and had been hardened 
by its trial by fire. 

In following the course of the fighting in and around 
New York it must be kept in mind that Washington 
never had a chance of holding the city, and knew it 
from the first; that his whole fight was for delay and 
that battles in which he was worsted were in fact vic- 
tories, for they served to check a little longer the ad- 
vance of the enemy toward the Hudson and a juncture 
with the troops of Carleton. Howe unwittingly aided 
Washington by failing to press his advantage when 
won. After his success on Long Island his troops 
rested in camp for two weeks, then crossed the East 
River and landed at Kip's Bay, near the present foot 
of Thirty-second Street. Washington had a small 
body of militia there to impede the landing, and he 
himself was speedily upon the scene with two New 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 59 

England brigades. To his amazement and unbridled 
wrath these troops fell into a panic at the first fire and 
began to retreat without firing a shot. At this spec- 
tacle the fighting blood of Washington, the rage that 
sometimes forced him into personal combat when as 
general he should have taken thought for his own 
safety, mastered him. Sword and pistol in hand he 
rode into the midst of the routed troops, heaping re- 
proaches and imprecations upon them and forcing his 
way through the mob to get at the enemy. His offi- 
cers implored him to spare himself from danger, but 
were brusquely ordered to stand aside. For a time 
his example held his demoralized troops, but the rout 
had gone too far to be stayed and in the end all fled 
leaving the landing party unopposed. 

There was good reason for Washington's wrath. 
In New York, which at that time hardly extended north 
of Wall Street, was General Israel Putnam with four 
thousand men. If Howe's troops were landed speed- 
ily they could quickly seize the roads leading to the 
north and hold Putnam and nearly one-third of the 
American army in a trap from which there was no 
escape. This, indeed, they prepared to do, and as fast 
as landed the British troops were pushed forward 
toward the centre of the island until they reached the 
point called Murray Hill, now the centre of the fash- 
ionable shopping district. It was then a handsome 
farm owned by Mrs. Lindley Murray, mother of the 
author of the famous grammar which earned for gen- 
erations of hapless school-boys more beatings than ever 
an army sustained. Mrs. Murray knew something 
about the easy-going habits of General Howe and sent 
out to invite him to luncheon. With a number of his 
principal officers Howe sat at the hospitable board for 
two hours, while his troops, fresh and fit for forced 
marches, loafed about in the fields. A bronze tablet 



6o STORYOFOURARMY 

stands on Park Avenue, near Thirty-Seventh Street, In 
commemoration of Mrs. Murray's diplomacy. 

Putnam, meanwhile, leaving behind his tents, blan- 
kets, and heavy guns, marched his men along the bank 
of the Hudson as far north as Bloomingdale, where he 
came in touch with the right wing of the main army 
and was safe. 

The American lines now extended directly across 
Manhattan Island from the juncture of the Harlem 
and East Rivers to the Hudson, somewhat north of the 
point at which Grant's tomb now stands. This situ- 
ation was not at all to Howe's liking. Mrs. Murray's 
lunch made scant amends for the lost opportunity to 
gobble up Putnam and his four thousand men. So for 
once without waiting to rest he attacked the centre of 
the American line but vvas repulsed with a loss of 
three hundred men, the Americans losing sixty. 

There followed four weeks more of inaction. 
Washington .rested content, for every week brought 
nearer the time when winter would take from him the 
task of keeping the bars across the route from New 
York to Canada. In the end Howe determined to 
land his troops on the mainland above the Harlem. 
He chose to send his troops up the East River, for the 
Hudson was guarded near the northern end of Man- 
hattan Island by Fort Washington on the New York 
and Fort Lee on the New Jersey side of the river. 
The Congress set great store by these works and thought 
they effectually closed the river to a hostile fleet, but 
as a matter of fact they were totally inadequate, and 
on the 9th of October were passed without trouble by 
two frigates. 

Howe landed his forces at Throg's Neck, a penin- 
sula at the entrance to Long Island Sound. He ex- 
pected no trouble in getting his troops to the mainland, 
but Washington, forehanded as usual, had burned the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 6i 

connecting bridge, and the marsh over which the 
British troops had to advance was submerged at high 
tide. Howe thus was checked again, for six days this 
time, and Washington took advantage of the halt to 
withdraw all his troops from Manhattan save a gar- 
rison at Fort Washington. 

For days there followed continuous fighting through- 
out that country known to New Yorkers as " the 
Bronx," now covered with apartment houses, but then 
rugged and affording good ground for the sort of 
fighting under cover to which the American army was 
best adapted. Howe pressing on from the east, and 
Rahl, with his Hessians coming up from Manhattan, 
pushed Washington in front and on the flank, forcing 
him steadily back toward the Hudson, The hardest 
fighting was near White Plains, where the Americans 
lost 130 killed and wounded, and the British 231. 
While Howe was considering attacking the American 
works here, Washington again slipped away, and took 
up a strong position at Newcastle where he was left 
unmolested. 

Unhappily there had been left at Fort Washington 
a garrison of more than three thousand men with artil- 
lery and stores. This little force was cut off from 
Washington's main army by the whole of Howe's com- 
mand. If attacked it would have no fate save sur- 
render or death. Washington recognized the peril of 
the situation and wished to withdraw the garrison to 
New Jersey which could readily have been done. Two 
explanations of his not doing so are given in history. 
According to one, his generals were so thoroughly con- 
vinced that Fort Washington was impregnable, and 
Congress was so insistent upon its being held, that he 
surrendered his own judgment and retained the gar- 
rison. According to the other, he did actually instruct 
General Greene to withdraw the garrison, and went 



62 STORYOFOURARMY 

himself to West Point to supervise the erection of a 
fort there that should effectively block all transit by the 
Hudson — something Forts Lee and Washington had 
already failed to do. 

While Washington was thus absent came special 
orders from Congress that the fort should not be aban- 
doned save in case of the direst extremity. Greene 
was in a dilemma. Washington's orders for the evac- 
uation were not peremptory, but left Greene a certain 
latitude of judgment. He personally believed that 
the fort could be successfully defended, but he did not 
know — nor did anyone else until some twenty years 
later — that a traitor, one William Demont, adjutant to 
Colonel Magaw in command, went into the British 
lines and furnished Lord Percy with plans of the fort 
and a statement of the garrison and armament. 
Greene, meanwhile, had reenforced Colonel Magaw, 
and the Americans, wholly ignorant of their betrayal, 
had every hope of holding the post. 

When Washington reached Fort Lee it was too late 
to withdraw the menaced garrison, since several of the 
enemy's ships had passed up the Hudson and that way 
of retreat was closed. But the confident messages of 
Magaw, supplemented by the assurances of Greene, 
somewhat allayed his misgivings and he was able to 
watch from the New Jersey side, through his field 
glasses the next day, the British preparations for the 
assault, without initial fear. 

November 15 Howe appeared before the fort with 
an overwhelming force. He sharply summoned 
Magaw to surrender, declaring that if any resistance 
were offered the whole garrison should be put to the 
sword. The summons was more like the swashbuck- 
ling manners of the buccaneers than characteristic of 
Howe, who was rather a mild-mannered man for a 
soldier. But it failed to affright Magaw who replied 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 63 

with spirit that if they wanted the fort they could come 
and tal^e it. 

Howe at once sent his troops forward to the attack. 
Having perfect knowledge of the contour of the fort 
and of the topography of the land about it, they 
planned their assault accordingly. The garrison re- 
sisted stubbornly, but found that the enemy, with a 
prescience which seemed to them supernatural, pushed 
in his column wherever the fort was weak. Men 
went down fast among the assailants, four to each one 
of the defenders, but they could afford the loss. 
Driven at last to the central point of the defensive 
works. Colonel Magaw saw the hopelessness of his 
case and surrendered. Howe, of course, made no ef- 
fort to enforce the bloody terms of his demand for a 
surrender, but some of the Hessians did break from 
control and massacred many of the Americans — seizing 
them unarmed, throwing them to the ground and des- 
patching them with bayonet stabs. As soon as Howe 
heard of this he forced the murderers to desist. It is 
said by many historians, the accurate Fiske among 
them, that Washington from the Jersey shore of the 
river witnessed the massacre, and the stout heart that 
blazed with ire in battle melted into tears at the sight of 
his gallant soldiers thus foully slain. If correct the 
incident shows an admirable trait in the commander- 
in-chief, but the width of the Hudson at that point sug- 
gests that it was rather intuition of what was going on, 
than actual sight of the massacre, that awakened his 
grief.^ 

This disaster was one of the most grievous that fell 
to the Colonial arms during the entire Revolution. 
True, the British had lost 500 men in the action to the 
Americans' 150, but the latter had surrendered 3,000 
of Washington's best troops, together with an enor- 
ous quantity of stores and many precious guns. More- 



64 STORY OF OURARMY 

over, it gave to Washington's whole New York cam- 
paign an air of disastrous failure when it had in fact 
been a complete success. For in that campaign, while 
the Americans won not a single battle, unless the favor- 
able result at White Plains be called a victory, they 
had yet won what they were fighting for, namely delay. 
It had taken Howe two months to move thirty miles. 
Winter was now at hand and the route south from the 
St. Lawrence was already closed by ice. 

The greatest disaster that might have followed the 
fall of Fort Washington was averted by the merest 
chance. The day before that battle Washington 
started for the fort to take command in person, but 
gave it up because of the supreme confidence of the 
defenders. Had he persisted he would probably have 
been captured, and perhaps hanged, for the British 
had not yet ceased to consider him a scoundrelly rebel. 
In any event, the chief command would have fallen 
to General Charles Lee, an English soldier of fortune, 
and an arrant imposter, whose showy qualities im- 
pressed Congress and won for him the second position 
in command. At this moment, Lee, with six thousand, 
was in an impregnable position at North Castle, near 
White Plains. Washington needed men. Lee's com- 
mand constituted almost half of his remaining army 
and he ^^rdered Lee to join him in Jersey. The 
latter made no move. If Washington's slender force 
should be overwhelmed by Howe and the commander 
slain or removed by Congress so much the better for 
Lee's fortunes. So he sat tight in his trenches and 
spent his days writing letters derogatory to Washing- 
ton and sounding his own praises. While the ink was 
still wet on one of these precious epistles, the British 
swooped down on him at a tavern, where, for greater 
comfort, he abode, some four miles from his own 
lines. The people, who were then, as now, fond of 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 65 

charlatans in uniform, while neglecting the plodding, 
persistent soldier, esteemed this a great disaster. As 
a 'matter of fact, it was a great aid to the American 
cause, as it removed from its lines a marplot and a 
tiaitor. The British must have discerned this, for 
instead of hanging him as a traitor — he had once been 
a lieutenant-colonel in the British army — they 
speedily exchanged him and sent him back to make 
more trouble. He really owed his escape to Washing- 
ton, who notified the British that he held five Hessian 
officers, whose fate should be that which was inflicted 
on Lee. Being thus saved, that rascal devoted his 
leisure time, in captivity, to formulating plans for 
the assistance of the British. In one of these, in his 
, own handwriting, but which was not discovered for 
nearly eighty years after the war, he declared he was 
willing to stake his life upon the subjugation of the 
colonies If his plan were adopted. 

Washington, meanwhile, was repeating in New 
Jersey the tactics of New York. Calling Greene 
away from Fort Lee, barely in time to avert a second 
disaster like that at Fort Washington, he retreated 
slowly to the south, sending almost daily letters to 
Lee, demanding that he join the army with his de- 
tachment. His own ranks were so depleted that he 
dared not risk even a skirmish. By the time he reached 
Princeton, December 8, he had but three thousand 
available men, and these were ill-armed and cowed 
by homesickness and a record of adversity. Putting 
the Delaware between himself and his enemy, and de- 
stroying every bridge or boat by which the British 
might hope to cross, Washington went into camp. 
The British soon arrived on the east bank, but had 
no means of crossing and Howe and Cornwallls went 
back to New York, where the comfort was greater. 
As a matter of fact, they thought the war practically 



66 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ended — when, as Paul Jones remarked, " we had not 
yet begun to fight." A proclamation of pardon and 
protection, issued at New York, brought three thou- 
sand Tories to take the oath of allegiance to King 
George, and Cornwallis had his trunks packed and 
aboard ship ready to sail for England after the 
Christmas festivities, which had been planned for New 
York. 

But Washington contributed an unexpected Christ- 
mas greeting. By this time the troops with which 
Lee had been trifling, and those under command of 
Gates and Sullivan, had reached him, increasing his 
force by about six thousand men. It was ever Wash- 
ington's policy to dispel gloom and despair in his 
army by some sudden stroke, which would restore 
confidence. This time he determined to attack Rahl, 
who, with twelve hundred Hessians, was stationed at 
Trenton. It may be noted here that the Hessians, 
during the New Jersey campaign had behaved 
like savages rather than civilized soldiers, burn- 
ing and sacking houses, killing non-combatants, rav- 
ishing women and carrying off young girls for brutal 
usage in their camps. Any successful stroke against 
these foreign brutes would be warmly applauded by 
the country. 

Washington determined to make his stroke success- 
ful and issued orders which, if obeyed, would have 
given him a force sufficient to crush all the British on 
the east bank of the river. Gates, Ewing, Putnam, 
and Cadwallader were to cross and join Washington 
on the farther shore. All failed. Each had his own 
excuse. But Washington did not fail. His high 
spirit led his men across the rushing Delaware, piled 
high with rolling ice-cakes, taking ten hours in cross- 
ing, and for nine miles through wintry snow and sleet 
to the town of Trenton he plodded in the van. Sulli- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 67 

van sent word that his muskets were wet and could not 
be fired. " Tell your general," responded the com- 
mander, " to use the bayonet. The town must be 
taken." The town was taken. The Hessians had 
been having an old-fashioned Christmas carouse, and 
well comforted with food and drink, they slept soundly. 
When the cries of their pickets and the racket of the 
musketry awoke them, it was to a hopeless contest. 
Half-frozen, mad with privations, and determined to 
win for the time at least the comfortable quarters of 
the foe, the Americans fought with desperation. Rahl 
was shot down trying to rally his men who, thereafter, 
ceased to fight but strove only to escape. In this about 
200 succeeded, about 30 were killed, and more than 
1,000 surrendered, with a large quantity of needed 
stores — Washington's Christmas present to his army. 
Two Americans were killed, and two frozen on the 
march. 

The remainder of the British and Hessians In the 
vicinity fled to Princeton. Up at New York, Corn- 
wallis disembarked his troops once more, and reflected 
that these Americans were a stubborn sort. Washing- 
ton sent the captured banners to Baltimore, where 
Congress was sitting, and marched the Hessian pris- 
oners through the streets of Philadelphia, in token of 
his victory. The public heart was strengthened at 
once, and enlistments showed a marked Increase. The 
people were ready to maintain a fighting army. 

The presence of Washington at Trenton was not 
pleasing to Howe and Cornwallls. It barred the path 
to Philadelphia, which they called " the rebel capital." 
Accordingly, Cornwallls gathered some eight thousand 
men at Princeton, and started on the familiar adven- 
ture of " trapping the Yankees." When he reached 
Trenton, he found the American force withdrawn be- 
yond the Assunpink, a small river flowing into the 



68 STORYOFOURARMY 

Delaware, and try as he would, he could not force a 
crossing. So he sent back to Princeton for two thou- 
sand more men, and determined to attack In the morn- 
ing. The British general went to bed in high spirits. 
" We have the old fox run down at last," he said, 
" and we will bag him in the morning." 

Washington was, indeed, in a perilous plight. With 
his superior force, Cornwallls could cross the stream 
above the Americans' line and crowd them down into 
the angle formed by the junction of the two rivers. 
In this predicament, the American commander deter- 
mined to run — not from battle, but in search of one 
under more equal conditions. He figured that Corn- 
wallls had so weakened the British force at Princeton, 
that a successful blow might be struck there. Accord- 
ingly the campfires were kept burning brightly through- 
out the night. Small parties of men were set to work 
noisily strengthening the breastworks and everything 
was done to make the British certain their enemy was 
still in their front. While this was done the American 
forces slipped out of the end of their works, marched 
around the British forces and set out on the road to 
Princeton. At sunrise Cornwallls found the American 
works empty. The " Old Fox " had slipped away once 
more. But whither? Just as the question was asked 
the far-away booming of cannon on the Princeton road 
answered It. Washington had met the troops Corn- 
wallls had called to his aid and giving prompt battle 
cut them to pieces — half fleeing down the road to Tren- 
ton, the other half making for New Brunswick where 
the British had a depot of supplies. The fight was too 
brief to be bloody, but about two hundred British and 
one hundred Americans fell, while about three hundred 
of the Redcoats were captured. 

Washington now had Princeton and the supplies 
gathered there. It had been his intention to go on to 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 69 

New Brunswick, where there was a larger depot, but 
his men were exhausted and so wretchedly shod that 
the roads were stained with their blood. In less than 
three weeks he had won two battles and captured two 
thousand men and quantities of supplies. Accordingly 
he determined to rest, and with the British practically 
driven from New Jersey, went into winter quarters. 
His campaign had been a marvellous one, winning the 
admiration even of his adversary. Lord Cornwallis, 
who, after his final defeat at Yorktown, took occasion 
to say to the American general, " Your excellency's 
achievements in New Jersey were such that nothing 
could surpass them." 

But Washington was forced to other achievements 
than those of war. During the dark days of the 
retreat through New Jersey his men were unpaid, half- 
clad, and less than half-fed, and the periods of their 
enlistment rapidly expiring. To meet their monetary 
needs Washington pledged his own private fortune, as 
did also gallant John Stark and other officers. But 
the desperate condition of the army coupled with the 
gallant showing it made at Trenton impelled Congress 
to action. It was guarded and half-way action, for the 
people were still jealous of a regular army, though how 
they could hope to win a revolution without one 
baffles imagination. Still Congress increased the num- 
ber of the army to sixty-six thousand men, furnished 
by the states in prescribed proportions, who were to 
serve for the period of the war, and at its close receive 
one hundred acres of land each. No state furnished 
its full quota of this force, nor, in the end, did the full 
number of enlistments reach the number authorized. 
Besides this, Washington was vested with the powers 
practically of a dictator, and authorized to raise in the 
name of the United States sixteen battalions of in- 
fantry, three of artillery, three thousand light cavalry, 



70 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

and a corps of engineers. This was a really national 
army with which the states had nothing to do. About 
it there was some grumbling, and some discussion of 
the right of Congress to create the force. But in the 
end it was accepted as one of the powers implied when 
Congress had been authorized to declare the United 
States independent and to wage war for the mainte- 
nance of that independence. 



CHAPTER IV 

Character of General Burgoyne — His Expedition into New York — 
Capture of Ticonderoga — Battle of Bennington — Battle of Oris- 
kany — Surrender of the British at Saratoga. 

The British generals who faced Washington between 
the beginning at Bunker Hill and the end at Yorktown, 
have not left behind them great names in military 
history. They invariably gave to the American com- 
mander time to recoup when he needed it, and an 
opportunity to strike hard when he was best equipped 
for the striking. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge de- 
scribes one general and his qualifications for command 
thus: 

" Burgoyne came of a good family, and had made 
a runaway marriage with the daughter of Lord 
Derby. As matters went then, these were sufficient 
reasons for the appointment; but in justice to Bur- 
goyne, it must be said that he had other attributes 
than those of birth and marriage. He was a member 
of Parliament and a clever debater; a man of letters 
and an agreeable writer; a not unsuccessful vese-maker 
and playwright; a soldier who had shown bravery in 
the war in Portugal; a gentleman and a man of fash- 
ion," It is not surprising that he proved the worst 
beaten of all the British generals. His type seems to 
have persisted long after in the British army, for after 
the Napoleonic wars the Duke of Wellington re- 
marked that in all the army there were not two men 
who, if they had fifty thousand men in Hyde Park, 
could get them out. 

But if the commanding generals were deficient in 

71 



72 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

capacity, the Ministry at St. James, which planned 
their grand strategy for them, was obviously stupid. 
It was, among other things, obsessed with the desire 
to hold the Hudson River from its source to its mouth 
and thus cut the colonies in twain. The purpose was 
not a futile one, from the military point of view, 
though to cut Washington's army to pieces would 
have more suddenly ended the Revolution. But the 
Ministry wished to attain their end, by bringing to- 
gether at the point desired, armies from widely sepa- 
rated points. In 1776 as we have seen, it was Howe's 
purpose to march up the river's bank and meet Carle- 
ton coming down from Canada. But Washington 
kept Howe busy enough in southern New York and 
New Jersey. Carleton did his part well enough, but 
was beaten back by Benedict Arnold, who worked 
and fought with a savagery which showed his deter- 
mination to avenge the disasters and defeat he had 
suffered in his own effort to capture Quebec. With 
large ships, built in England, and taken to pieces in 
order to pass the rapids of the St. Lawrence, supple- 
mented by twenty gunboats and more than two hun- 
dred flat-bottomed bateaux, Carleton took a force of 
twelve thousand men into Lake Champlain, in the 
summer of 1776, and started for Fort Ticonderoga. 
Arnold was awake to his coming. His woodsmen 
felled the forest trees in Vermont and shaped them 
into ship's timbers. Shipwrights, sailmakers, gunners 
with, their guns, and seamen to navigate the building 
flotilla, had to be brought from the coastwise towns. 
By September, he had a mosquito fleet of three 
schooners, two sloops, three galleys, and eight gon- 
dolas, mounting 70 guns. About all he could hope 
to do was to harass and delay Carleton, hoping that 
winter would do the rest — just as Washington was 
hoping down in New York. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 73 

Carleton, like Howe, cooperated ably with winter. 
Brushing aside Arnold's fleet, after a stiff battle lasting 
four hours, he sailed on to Ticonderoga, whither Arn- 
old had preceded him. Then he stopped. The 
fortress looked formidable. The way back to Quebec 
seemed long and painful. Winter was approaching. 
So to the amazement of the Americans, who were 
awaiting his attack without fear, but without much 
hope, he broke camp and started back for Canada. 
The blunder was colossal, and for it he was censured 
by all of his superior officers and even by the King 
himself. 

The failure of the efforts to make a British river 
of the Hudson in 1776, did not divert the Ministry 
from their purpose, and during the winter new plans 
to the same end were formulated. This time Carleton 
was to stay in Quebec and General Burgoyne invade 
the colonies by the Lake Champlain route. But more: 
Colonel St. Leger, with a smaller force, was to go up 
the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario to Oswego and 
proceed thence by the Mohawk Valley to join Bur- 
goyne at the Hudson. The Indians and the Tories 
who, under the influence of Sir John Johnson, were 
strong in the valley, were expected to aid St. Leger. 
Finally, Howe was to make the march up the Hudson, 
which Washington had rudely interrupted the year 
before. 

On paper, the programme was as simple as drawing 
three lines, converging at a given point. There 
proved, however, to be obstacles to its fulfillment. 
The first was natural — and fatal. In a well cleared 
country, with good roads and easy intercommunica- 
tion between all points, a converging movement of 
this sort is looked upon by strategists as perilous, be- 
cause the enemy, his force united and with shorter 
interior lines to any point, can strike any one of the 



74 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

three invading columns and destroy it before the others 
can render aid. This is vastly more true when the 
invaders are separated from each other by hundreds 
of miles of wilderness, with few roads and those little 
more than Indian trails through the forest. The 
British strategists overlooked, too, the readiness of 
the American farmer to fight, whether enrolled in the 
army or not, when the sound of an invasion approached 
his home. They did not understand the Berserker 
wrath, awakened by the employment of Indians as 
well as Hessians to slaughter American colonists. And, 
finally, they were probably ignorant of the crass stu- 
pidity and negligence in their own office, which enabled 
Lord George Germaine, being in haste to catch a coach 
for his country-seat, to tuck the orders to Howe into 
a pigeon-hole of his desk and leave them there to gather 
dust until after the Revolution was over and Burgoyne, 
St. Leger, and Howe safely at home mooning over 
their defeats. 

It is doubtful whether the end for which the British 
planned so eagerly, the control of the Hudson, was 
worth while. The point of greatest vitality in the 
colonies, at the opening of the summer of 1777, was 
Washington's army which numbered only about eight 
thousand men. Howe, with twenty thousand, ought 
to have been able to crush it without aid, but had 
Carleton and Burgoyne put on ship the ten thousand 
or more men with whom they invaded northern New 
York and sent them around to New York Bay, they 
could have driven Washington off the map. And it 
cannot be too often reiterated that Washington was 
the brains and the vital fluid of the Revolution. 

However, the plan of the British Ministry was fol- 
lowed, fortunately for the Americans, and as the three 
columns never did get together, we may well consider 
the fate of each separately. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 75 

Burgoyne entered the colonial territory first. He 
had an army of about 8,000 men, of whom 3,116 
were Hessians and 503 Indians. If anything were 
calculated to make the American farmers fight fiercely, 
it was the invasion of their country by foreign mercen- 
aries and painted savages. Indeed, it had already 
been seen in New Jersey that the Hessians were as 
barbarous and as indifferent to the laws of civilized 
warfare as the redskins themselves. The bitterness 
awakened by the personnel of his army, Burgoyne 
enhanced by a fustian proclamation, warning the peo- 
ple of devastation, famine, and the horrors of the 
battle field. He was gaily sanguine of complete vic- 
tory and made his way up Lake Champlain with 
banners flying and bands playing, that the hearts of 
his Indian allies might be the more stirred. It may 
be worth noting here that the Indians were, through- 
out the campaign, a hindrance rather than a help to 
Burgoyne. At the outset, he besought them " to re- 
strain their passions," to conduct themselves " in ac- 
cordance with the religion and laws of warfare 

* * * which belonged to Great Britain " and 
which positively forbade " bloodshed when not im- 
posed in arms," and, finally, told them that ** aged 
men, women, children, and prisoners were sacred from 
the knife, even in conflict." The redmen listened in 
amaze, grunted in disgust, and went on handling the 
tomahawk and scalping knife as of yore. The Ger- 
man officers with the army, reported to their sover- 
eigns repeated outrages, one chronicling a day in 
which the Indians brought twenty scalps into camp. 

At first, events seemed to justify all Burgoyne's 
hopes. Fort Ticonderoga, owing to the neglect of 
Congress, was barely half-garrisoned, and by a singu- 
lar neglect of plain prudence, a tall hill near by, called 
Mt. Defiance, which wholly commanded the fort, had 



76 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

not been occupied. There had been discussion of this 
very point among the American officers, who finally 
decided that the hill was too steep for the enemy to 
drag heavy siege guns to the top. But this is pre- 
cisely what the British did do. " Where a goat can 
go, a man can go;" said General Phillips, of Bur- 
goyne's army, " and where a man can go, he can drag 
a gun." And so after some days' hard work on the 
side of the hill shielded from American observation, 
the dogged general broke out a pathway and capped 
the hill with a neat battery, which made Fort Ticon- 
deroga untenable. 

There was nothing for it but to abandon the fort, 
and St. Clair fled under cover of night. He did not 
get off scot free, however, as by ill-luck a frame house 
within the fort caught fire and the flames aroused the 
British to pursuit. In their flight, the Americans lost 
heavily, but finally reached Schuyler with the main 
army at Fort Edward, after a loss of about one-third 
of St. Clair's men. 

The fall of Ticonderoga produced vast rejoicing 
in England and corresponding wrath in America. 
After the fashion of British generals, who won an 
initial skirmish, Burgoyne dispatched at once news 
of his victory to England with as much boasting as 
though his whole campaign were ended. Horace 
Walpole describes the childish George III dancing into 
the Queen's apartments, clapping his hands and crying, 
"I have beaten the Americans! I have beaten all 
the Americans ! " At this very moment, Burgoyne 
was in a most precarious position and on his way to a 
field on which he was destined to be soundly beaten. 

The Americans, for their part, were savage with 
wrath. Why had not Mt. Defiance been fo''tificd? 
" We shall never be able to defend a post until we 
shoot, a general," said John Adams, and the finger of 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 77 

scorn was pointed at St. Leger, Schuyler, and Gates, 
one of whom must have been responsible for the unde- 
fended state of Mt. Defiance. But, after all, the 
value of Fort Ticonderoga, to either friend or foe, 
was greatly overestimated. Burgoyne found it a bur- 
den, for he had to leave an eighth of his force to de- 
fend it. If reduced to its present condition of ruin, 
neither the British nor the American arms would have 
suffered. 

The country into which Burgoyne now plunged, was 
the most efficient of the Americans' allies. The roads 
were vile, the forests on either side impenetrable, and 
through all was a tangle of swamps and creeks. St. 
Clair and Schuyler, retreating, used the axe and the 
torch to make the way of pursuit more difficult. Great 
trees were felled across the roads; the streams, where 
navigable, were blocked by stumps and boulders, and 
bridges were burned with such completeness that Bur- 
goyne had forty to rebuild in making a thirty-mile 
march. His rate of progress was about a mile a day. 
The settlers, instead of flocking to him with protesta- 
tions of loyalty, drove their flocks and herds to places 
of safety, and came back to harass his flanks. 

One incident, inevitable when Indians were em- 
ployed in war, served still further to infuriate the 
American settlers. Jennie McRea, the beautiful 
daughter of a Scotch clergyman, was visiting at Fort 
Edward, not far from the British lines, when a raid- 
ing party of Indians burst into the house and carried 
her away with her host, a Mrs. McNeil. What hap- 
pened that night has never been authoritatively told, 
but there was pursuit and attack by some American 
soldiers and the next morning Mrs. McNeil found her 
way alone into the British camp. During the day, a 
gigantic savage came in flaunting a scalp, which was 
at once recognized by its long black tresses as that of 



78 STORYOFOURARMY 

the girl. After brief search, her body was found 
pierced with three bullet wounds. The Wyandotte 
Panther, as the chief who displayed the scalp was 
called, declared she had been shot accidentally in the 
skirmish. But the story spread that the Indians se- 
cured rum, got drunk, and gave their savage instincts 
full rein, finally murdering and scalping the girl. Em- 
broidered in various ways the story spread about the 
country and was told as indicative of the barbarities 
that followed in the British train. Burgoyne, a kindly 
and sympathetic man, in horror and wrath would have 
hanged the Panther but that his officers feared the 
effect of such action upon their savage allies. So he 
contented himself with ordering that henceforth no 
marauding parties of Indians should leave the camp 
save with a British officer in command. When the 
redskins comprehended this order, they sulked for a 
day or two, then stealing all they could lay hands on, 
sneaked away to their forest fastnesses. King George 
had lost five hundred or more valuable allies, and he 
had stirred up some thousands of " embattled farm- 
ers " to land on Burgoyne's flank. The story of 
Jennie McRea was the best of recruiting arguments. 
Burgoyne by this time had reached Fort Edward, 
on the headwaters of the Hudson. There he stopped. 
Food was running low. Instead of living on the coun- 
try, the irate farmers compelled him to "bring his 
supplies from Canada. Horses to drag his cannon 
were lacking. But he heard that the rising militia of 
New England had established a depot of supplies at 
Bennington, Vermont, where there were horses and food 
in abundance. So he sent about one thousand Hessians 
and one hundred Indians, under command of Lieuten- 
ant-Colonel Baum, to seize the plunder and inciden- 
tally to discipline the rebels. Baum had been told that 
a friendly country-side would turn out to meet him — it 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 79 

did, but after the fashion in which wasps turn out to 
greet the boy who disturbs their nest. In affright, 
Baum entrenched himself at Bennington, to await the 
arrival of the second half of his army, which was fol- 
lowing under Colonel Breymann. 

By good fortune. General John Stark, of Washing- 
ton's army, a veteran of Bunker Hill, Trenton, and 
Princeton, was not far away in New Hampshire. As 
a matter of fact, the old farmer was sulking for, like 
several other generals who really fought — like Bene- 
dict Arnold, for example — he had been passed over by 
Congress in favor of generals who merely intrigued. 
But the thought of a British force so near his own 
hearth roused the warrior spirit. Hastily rallying 
about eight hundred armed farmers, and swearing that 
he would take orders neither from Congress nor any 
superior officer, he set off to find the foe. At Ben- 
nington, he was joined by nearly two hundred " Green 
Mountain Boys," led by a " fighting parson " — not an 
unusual figure among the Colonial volunteers. John 
Fiske tells the story of the meeting thus: 

" Mr. Allen, the warlike parson, of Pittsfield, went 
up to Stark and said, ' Colonel, our Berkshire people 
have been often called out to no purpose and if you 
don't let them fight now they will never turn out again.' 
' Well,' said Stark, ' would you have us turn out now, 
while it is pitch dark and raining bullets? ' ' No, not 
just this minute,' replied the minister. ' Then ,' said 
the doughty Stark, * as soon as the Lord shall once 
more send us sunshine, if I don't give you fighting 
enough, I'll never ask you to come out again.' " 

The sunshine came with the morning. It found Baum 
with his German regulars, posted behind breastworks on 
the crest of a small hill beyond the shallow stream. 
'* There they are, men," cried Stark, pointing. 
" They'll be ours by night or Molly Stark will be a 



8o STORY OFOURARMY 

widow." The New Englanders had the more men — 
nearly two to one — but had no bayonets or side arms, 
nor any cannon. Baum had two field pieces. To 
carry breastworks without bayonets against a well- 
equipped force was unprecedented, but it had to be 
done. All the morning, in small groups, Stark's men 
wandered aimlessly around Baum's flanks, to his rear. 
They excited no attention. The Germans, accustomed 
to European fields, were looking for an army with 
drums and banners. Their own leather hats and cum- 
brous swords weighed more than the whole equipment 
of a British soldier, while the American carried noth- 
ing but his rifle, bullet pouch and powder horn. These 
simple farmers, in cotton jumpers or shirt-sleeves, were 
probably timid Tories seeking a spot of safety, thought 
the Germans. But at a signal, the shirt-sleeved ones 
poured in a fierce rifle fire from front, rear and both 
flanks. With a yell, the Indians fled, but the Ger- 
mans doggedly closed up and for two hours the fighting 
was furious. Protected only in front by their breast- 
works, the Germans fell fast before a fire from the 
rear. At last the Americans charged, meeting bay- 
onets with clubbed muskets and after a murderous 
melee in which Baum fell, mortally wounded, the Brit- 
ish surrendered. 

It was none too soon, for just at this juncture, with 
his own men tired out by battle and demoralized by 
victory. Stark saw the fresh troops of Breymann ap- 
proaching. For a moment the Americans wavered 
but just then General Seth Warner, with his " Green 
Mountain Boys," arrived and the second German force 
was disposed of, like the first. Breymann fled, with 
fifty or sixty men, and carried the news to Burgoyne. 
It was not cheerful news for that harassed chieftan. 
Instead of a Tory country, he had found a Patriot 
stronghold. Instead of getting fresh horses and food, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 8i 

he had lost one of his best officers, 207 men killed or 
wounded, 700 captured, 1,000 stand of small arms, 
1,000 dragoon swords and four field pieces. Fourteen 
Americans were killed and 42 wounded. 

Disasters now began to come fast to Burgoyne. 
Hardly had the news of the defeat at Bennington 
grown old when there came the tidings from central 
New York that the column, which was advancing to 
his aid by way of the Mohawk Valley, had been de- 
feated, and had fled back to Lake Ontario, on its way 
to Canada. It will be remembered that Colonel St. 
Leger, with several regiments had been assigned to 
this enterprise. His initial force was small, but the 
Tories were strong in the Mohawk Valley, where Sir 
John Johnson ruled like an English feudal baron of 
the olden time. It was thought that this element 
would greatly strengthen St. Leger, and he was, in- 
deed, met at Oswego by Johnson, with his famous 
Tory regiment called the Royal Greens, and Colonel 
Butler, with his company of Tory rangers. The Mo- 
hawk Indians, too, under the influence of their famous 
chief, Joseph Brant, joined him. As he had, besides 
regulars, Hessian-Chasseurs, Canadian voyageurs, and 
a company of axemen, his force was decidedly motley. 

Moving out from Oswego about the last of July 
with some seventeen hundred men, St. Leger, on Aug- 
ust 8, sat himself down before Fort Stanwix (some- 
times called Fort Schuyler), which was defended by 
about six hundred men under Colonel Peter Gaines- 
voort. The fort was too strong to be carried by 
assault, so St. Leger settled down to a siege. It proved 
the old story. All the Americans needed was time, 
and that the British generals were always giving them. 
In this instance, time was afforded for the Patriots in 
the valley, who hated bitterly their Tory neighbors 
for their assumption of superiority, to rise and organ- 



82 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ize. This they did to the number of some eight 
hundred under General Nicholas Herkimer, a stout 
old Patriot over 60 years of age. Leading his forces, 
unsuspected by the British, to Oriskany, within eight 
miles of the fort, Herkimer sent forward three run- 
ners. The garrison was apprised of his approach 
and told to fire three guns when the scouts arrived. 
They were then to fall furiously upon the enemy in 
front, while Herkimer would attack him in the rear. 

The plan which events showed would have fully 
succeeded had it been carried out, was spoiled by hot- 
heads, untried soldiers in Herkimer's army. The 
scouts were late in getting to the fort, and though all 
the merit of the strategy hung on attacking the British 
simultaneously in front and rear, the younger soldiers 
grew restive waiting for the signal guns and demanded 
that he lead them to battle. He resisted long, but at 
last stirred to wrath by the epithets, "Tory" and 
" coward," he gave the order to advance, saying bit- 
terly that some of those so eager to fight too soon would 
be the first to run away. 

Meanwhile, the British had heard of the American 
advance and dispatched the Royal Greens and the 
Indians, under Brant, to meet it. The cunning chief 
at once planned an ambuscade in a ravine, into which 
the Americans fell headlong, and encountered a fire 
that would have routed them had they not been trained 
bush fighters. The fighting was bloody and desperate 
in the extreme. Here were old neighbors, farmers 
whose lands abutted, and whose children went to the 
same schools, fighting out ancient grudges with clubbed 
musket, with bayonets and with knives. There was 
no semblance of orderly battle. The ravine was filled 
with a mob of maddened men intent on killing, while 
the more cautious Indians hovered in the background, 
slaying when the risk to them was least. Their favor- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 83 

ite method was to watch for a puff of smoke from 
behind some tree, then rush and with club or toma- 
hawk, dispatch the rifleman before he could reload. 
Early in the action Herkimer received a fatal wound 
but sat propped against a beech tree, smoking his pipe 
and directing the course of battle so far as the soldiers, 
now without any semblance of organization, would 
heed direction. Even nature took part in the infernal 
din and a furious thunder-storm, with the peals of 
thunder, the roaring of the wind, and the splashing 
of the sheets of rain, silenced the shrieks of the sol- 
diers and the clatter of the musketry. 

As the storm died away the noise of battle was 
heard coming from the fort five miles away. Herki- 
mer knew that it meant the sortie had been made, now 
that his men were too weary to take the fullest ad- 
vantage of it. The British, however, were perplexed, 
and for the moment relaxed their efforts. The In- 
dians, too, were startled and fearing the worst, set 
up their weird cry of retreat, " Oonah ! Oonah ! " 
and slipped off into the wilderness. The British there- 
upon gave up the fight and fled, the Americans being 
too exhausted to pursue them. 

The sortie, meantime, had been a complete success. 
Colonel Willett, who had led it, routed Sir John John- 
son with his Tories and Indians, and looted his camp 
with thoroughness. Seven wagons were three times 
loaded with spoil and driven into the fort, while the 
quantity of food and munitions of war was prodigious. 
Five British standards were captured and presently 
flung to the breeze above the ramparts beneath the 
first American flag ever displayed. For Congress had 
just approved the design of the stars and stripes, 
though no flags were yet available. But the Ameri- 
cans in Fort Stanwix made one out of a white shirt, 
a soldier's blue jacket, and a woman's red skirt, and 



84 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

flung It out high above the five humbled British en- 
signs. 

Though it neither destroyed the British army nor 
raised the siege of Fort Stanwix, the battle of Oriskany 
was a notable American victory, and that the Ameri- 
can flag should then have been first displayed — August 
6» 1777 — was meet and right. Had Herkimer's plan 
been followed, all the fruits sought by his attack would 
have been gained, and perhaps the life of the doughty 
old soldier spared, for he died bravely the day after 
the fight, puffing his pipe, reading his Bible, and se- 
renely conscious of having done his duty. 

Some days later, the news of Oriskany reached 
Schuyler, with an appeal for aid to Fort Stanwix. 
The general, though himself eager to send a relief 
expedition, was opposed by his officers, one of whom 
Impudently said, " He only wants to weaken the army." 
Schuyler's wrath was roused. " Enough," he cried. 
In the council, " I take all the responsibility. What 
brigadier will take command? " All sat in sulky si- 
lence until Benedict Arnold, who had been sent thither 
by Washington, and was still justifiably aggrieved over 
his treatment by Congress, jumped up, crying, " Here! 
Washington sent me here to make myself useful and I 
will go." 

Next morning with twelve hundred volunteers, Arn- 
old set forth. He won his end practically without a 
battle, for capturing on his way some Tory scouts 
he found among them a half-witted fellow called Yam 
Yost Cuyler whom the Indians regarded with the 
superstitious awe with which they always looked on 
idiots and lunatics. Yam was first condemned to 
death, then, when sufficiently scared, was promised 
pardon If he would spread panic In the British camp. 
He joyously agreed and set out. Next day Johnson's 
Indians began telling stories of advancing Americans, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 85 

more numerous than the leaves on the trees. Then 
Yam turned up in St. Leger's camp, his coat riddled 
with bullets. He had escaped miraculously, he said, 
from an overpowering American host. He was 
known as a Tory and Johnson's men believed his re- 
port. They began to desert, while the Indians broke 
open the stores and regaling themselves too freely with 
rum began to attack the whites. Suddenly, panic fell 
upon the whole camp. So great was the demoraliza- 
tion that St. Leger and Johnson fell into a fierce quar- 
rel, drew their swords and were only stopped from 
mortal combat by the interposition of Indians. The 
red men found something humorous in the British 
panic. When the fugitives were resting an Indian 
would come dashing up crying, "They are coming! 
They are coming!^' and the poor, harried soldiers 
would take up the flight again. The whole army 
fled, leaving tents, artillery, and stores behind. Mar- 
velling much at this precipitate retreat, for which they 
knew no reason, the garrison sallied forth in pursuit, 
but went a little way only. The Indians were more 
pertinacious. One scalp was as good as another to 
them, and they pursued the hapless troops of St. Leger 
even to the doors of Oswego, where what was left of 
the British force took boat back to Montreal. 

Burgoyne, facing starvation at Fort Edward, had 
hardly digested the news of Stark's victory at Benning- 
ton, when the tidings came to him of the complete 
obliteration of St. Leger's force. His army was fast 
dwindling; the American forces found hundreds of 
new recruits after each new success. At no time did 
the British camp have provisions for more than two 
days ahead. No word came from Howe, who, Bur- 
goyne supposed was advancing by the Hudson to join 
him. As a matter of fact, Howe had gone south to 
take Philadelphia, but had sent Sir Henry Clinton up 



86 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the Hudson with a small force. It Is enough to say 
here that Clinton swept the Hudson clear of impedi- 
ments, broke the great chain that stretched across the 
river at the Highlands and captured the American 
forts established to guard it. He ultimately reached 
Albany, but not in time to be of service to Burgoyne. 
That officer for his part would have been fully justi- 
fied in beginning a retreat to Canada, but being a gal- 
lant soldier decided to risk all. " The expedition 
which I commanded," he wrote, " was at first evidently 
intended to be hazarded; circumstances might require 
it should be devoted." 

Accordingly, Burgoyne threw a bridge of boats 
across the Hudson and crossed with his army on Sep- 
tember 1 8. That very day, far In his rear, an Ameri- 
can force fell on the outposts at Ticonderoga, captured 
them with three hundred British soldiers and released 
one hundred American captives. The road to Canada 
was being blocked behind him; his way south was 
barred by the American army, now under General 
Horatio Gates, with whom Congress had supplanted 
Schuyler. 

This is no place to discuss the blunders made by 
Congress when It sought to remove and appoint gen- 
erals. A whole volume would not be too long for 
such a discussion. Political generals, intriguers, spec- 
tacular self-advertisers, always appealed to Congress. 
Gates was a compound of all three. He was a fit as- 
sociate for Charles Lee, with whom he had held a 
correspondence closely verging on the treasonable. 
Washington trusted Schuyler and distrusted Gates — 
Congress degraded the one and exalted the other. 
Congress nearly drove John Stark out of the army, and 
treated Arnold with such gross Injustice as to palliate, 
though not excuse, his later treason. It would be well 
to-day when passion has somewhat died down. If our 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 87 

children could be taught that Benedict Arnold was a 
martyr long before he was a traitor. 

But to return to Burgoyne. Scarcely had he crossed 
the river, when he found himself confronted by the 
Americans who occupied strong works on Bemis 
Heights — works which had been skilfully laid out by 
the Pole, Kosciusko, who, denied liberty in his own 
country, had come to fight for it here. After recon- 
noitring Burgoyne concluded that Gates's position could 
be carried by a strong attack, and he began his dis- 
positions with this end in view. Early in the morning 
of the 19th, his troops began to move. Then was 
shown the folly of brilliant uniforms, which not until 
the last of the Nineteenth Century, did nations abandon 
for troops in active service. The patches of bright 
scarlet moving through the green forest quickly caught 
the eyes of the American scouts, and Burgoyne's stategy 
was unmasked almost as soon as it was begun. Arnold 
was informed first of the movement and sent mes- 
sengers to Gates for permission to attack. Gates hesi- 
tated. He hated Arnold, and moreover, was sedulous 
in his efforts to prevent any of his generals from 
achieving any reputation for themselves. At last, he 
gave a grudging permission, and Arnold, with his usual 
fiery dash, fell upon Burgoyne's advance in the midst 
of an abandoned clearing called Freeman's Farm. 
Both sides fought in the open, the Americans having 
few bayonets and no artillery. Yet they repeatedly 
captured the British guns, but were unable to hold them 
and had unhappily no appliances for spiking them. In 
the end Arnold pierced Burgoyne's line, and sent an 
earnest appeal to Gates for reenforcements, which ap- 
peal was ignored. It became evident later that, had 
the fresh troops been sent, Burgoyne's army would have 
been ended then and there. But that would have given 
Arnold high reputation, which was the last thing Gates 



88 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

desired. Indeed, the commanding general in his final 
report made no mention of Arnold at all, though Bur- 
goyne, in his testimony before the House of Commons, 
frankly admitted that his whole plan of attack had 
been defeated by the activity and dash of " Mr." 
Arnold. 

The battle of Freeman's Farm was essentially a 
draw, though the British held the field. The losses, 
however, told heavily against the enemy, and had not 
Gates kept eleven thousand men idly watching the fray 
from Bemis Heights, the Burgoyne expedition would 
then have been ended. Though he kept Arnold's name 
out of the official dispatches. Gates could not keep it 
off the tongues of the soldiers who were tireless in 
sounding the praises of this general who fought. Ac- 
cordingly, instead of proceeding at once to crush Bur- 
goyne, Gates set himself to crush Arnold by all sorts of 
tyranny and injustice. He practically deprived Arnold 
of all command, ignored him as though he were the 
cheapest of camp followers, and even told him he 
might quit the army and return to Washington's camp 
if he chose. In white wrath Arnold declared he would 
go, but after a moment his loyalty to Washington as- 
serted itself, and he swore doggedly that he would stay 
where the commander-in-chief had sent him. 

For a time the two armies rested in their lines ; Gates's 
force growing steadily; Burgoyne's case growing daily 
more desperate. No word came from Clinton. That 
officer had indeed dispatched a messenger with a brief 
note of encouragement enclosed in a hollow silver bullet. 
American scouts captured the messenger, who was seen 
to swallow something. An emetic was applied, the 
bullet was disgorged, the note was read, the messenger 
hanged to an apple tree, and Burgoyne was left in 
ignorance of the advance of his supporting force. 

So he determined to attack Gates again, and with 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 89 

1,500 picked men under his best commanders, made 
the effort on October 7. His line was hardly in motion 
when it was struck on the flank by Morgan's riflemen, 
while an overwhelming force attacked in front. Car- 
ried away by this superior force, the British lines broke. 
Arnold — destitute of any command — watching from 
the Heights, saw that the moment was ripe for a deci- 
sive stroke. He leaped to his saddle and dashed down 
among the Americans, who recognized and cheered him 
lustily. 

"Call back that fellow!" cried Gates, as Arnold 
galloped toward the place of battle, " or he will be 
doing something rash." 

It was time for something rash, and Arnold did it. 
Rallying the Americans he attacked in turn General 
Fraser, who fell mortally wounded; the Canadians, 
who fled; Lord Balcanas, who occupied intrenchments 
too strong to be taken, and Breymann, who was slain 
and his force of Hessians routed. The battle was won 
while Gates rested idly in his tent, discussing the politi- 
cal reasons for the Revolution with a wounded British 
oflicer. Burgoyne was forced back to his fortified camp 
whence he could not be dislodged. Arnold, in one of 
his fierce attacks, was badly wounded by a shot fired by 
a wounded Hessian lying on the ground. As Arnold 
fell, an American rushed up and was about to bayonet 
the German, when the general cried out, " For God's 
sake, don't hurt him; he's a fine fellow." The hand 
of the avenger was stayed. 

There was nothing for Burgoyne to do but to retreat, 
which he did the next day. During the night the body 
of General Fraser was buried, and the American shot 
and shell whistled through the air above the mourners. 
The Baroness Riedesel, who had spent the day of the 
battle in a house near the field, tells of the circumstances 
attending the general's death: "The noise grew 



90 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

dreadful, upon which I was more dead than alive. 
About three o'clock in the afternoon, instead of guests 
whom I expected to dine with me, I saw one of them, 
poor General Fraser, brought in on a hand-barrow, 
mortally wounded. The table, which was already pre- 
pared for dinner, was immediately removed and a bed 
placed in its stead for the General. I sat terrified and 
trembling in a corner. The noise grew more alarming, 
and I was in a continual agony and tremor while think- 
ing that my husband might soon be brought in wounded 
like General Fraser. ... I heard often amid his 
groans such words words as these, * Oh bad ambition! 
Poor General Burgoyne ! Poor Mistress Fraser!'" 

The retreat took the British only to the village of 
Saratoga, where it was found that every bridge, ford, 
and pass leading to ultimate safety, was heavily guarded 
by Americans. The British camp was wholly sur- 
rounded, and exposed to a galling fire on every side. 
The cellar of a large house was used as a retreat for 
some women and children, with a few of the wounded. 
With little food or water, and the American rifle bul- 
lets and cannon balls crashing through the house over- 
head, their sufferings were indescribable. Though the 
river was near, every man who ventured out with a 
bucket for water, was picked off by sharpshooters. At 
last a woman went out and the American riflemen, 
respecting her sex, the thirst of the prisoners was 
assuaged. 

By this time, surrender was obviously the one re- 
course for Burgoyne. His provisions were low, and 
his commissaries reported pathetically that for days 
they had neither rum nor spruce beer. At first Gates 
would listen to nothing but unconditional surrender, 
but a rumor reached him that Clinton was near with 
heavy reenforcements for the British, and he moderated 
his demands. Burgoyne heard the same rumor, and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 91 

for a time, was inclined to withdraw from the conven- 
tion, but in the end agreed to surrender, being granted 
all the honors of war, his officers to retain their side- 
arms, and his army to be sent back to England by way 
of Boston. 

The first part of this programme was carried out 
October 17, 1777. In a meadow by the riverside, the 
British laid down their arms in the presence of the 
American army. Speaking of the demeanor of the 
victors, a captured lieutenant said, " I did not observe 
the least disrespect, or even a taunting look, but all was 
mute astonishment and pity." But because of most 
dishonorable delay and indecision on the part of Con- 
gress, the agreement to send home the captured army 
was never fulfilled. The soldiers were moved from 
point to point, being finally established in a village built 
for them near Charlottesville, Virginia. Many escaped 
with the connivance of their guards, but most settled 
down permanently and were finally fused in the great 
melting pot of American citizenship. 

Burgoyne had done his best, but the task confronting 
him was one no one could have performed without the 
active aid of Howe. After his return to England, the 
general entered Parliament, where he became known 
as one of the defenders of the Americans on the floor 
of the House of Commons. Perhaps the harshest 
criticism of him was expressed by Baroness Riedesel, 
who travelled with his army. She wrote: 

" It is very true that General Burgoyne liked to 
make himself easy, and that he spent half his nights in 
singing, drinking, and diverting himself with the wife 
of a commissary who was his mistress, and who was 
as fond of champagne as himself." 



CHAPTER V 

Howe Moves to Philadelphia — Washington's Defence of that City — 
Battles of the Brandywine and Germantown — Battle of Fort 
Mifflin — The Winter at Valley Forge — Clinton's Retreat. 

While Burgoyne was thus moving onward to his own 
downfall in northern New York, Washington and 
Howe were confronting each other in New Jersey and 
Pennsylvania. But the real interest of the campaign 
of 1777 centers about the events related In the last 
chapter. Howe, who had troops enough to have 
crushed Washington, outdid his own record for delay, 
and while the winter of 1.776 was spent by the Ameri- 
cans in reorganizing and strengthening the army, the 
summer or campaigning months were consumed by 
both armies in futile marches and counter-marches with 
indecisive or unimportant battles. The only book of 
strategy from which Howe could have drawn his plan 
of campaign must have been that of the King of France, 
who: 

" * * * ^iiYi f^fty thousand men 
Marched up a hill, and then marched down again." 

When Washington went into winter quarters in the 
neighborhood of Morristown, N. J., in December, 
1776, his army was at low ebb. Though Congress had 
vested him with dictatorial powers, and authorized the 
increase of the army to sixty-six thousand men, enlist- 
ments were slow and March 14, 1777, the general re- 
ported to Congress that he had but three thousand 
men fit for duty. That was the time for Howe to 
strike, with the eighteen thousand men he had under 
arms. It is said that the adjutant of the American 

9a 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 93 

army had false rolls prepared showing twelve thousand 
men under arms and gave a British spy an opportunity 
to see them, and that Howe was affected by the report. 
At any rate he did nothing but march into New Jersey 
and out again, enjoying what the British called " two 
weeks' fooling " in that state. The fooling was seri- 
ous for the settlers, for the Hessians pillaged right and 
left, and British officers when appealed to merely ob- 
served that that was the German way of making war. 
It was not a popular way with the settlers, and they 
resented it by enlisting in the Patriot army. Before 
spring Washington had more than eight thousand men. 
At this time needed help came from France in the shape 
of 2,300 muskets, 1,000 barrels of powder, and shoes 
for 25,000 men. These munitions were collected and 
sent by Beaumarchais, the French wit and watchmaker. 
Congress manifested its gratitude to the patriotic play- 
wright by not paying his bill until 1835 — long after 
his death — and then paying only one-fourth of it. 

One of the munitions of war continually arriving 
from France, and as a rule not greatly valued, was the 
French officer. Usually according to his own account 
he was a nobleman, and must, therefore, have a high 
commission. He was accustomed to luxury and must, 
therefore, be well paid and lavishly equipped. His 
professed long experience in war was supposed to make 
amends for his ignorance of the English language, so 
that he could neither receive commands understand- 
ingly nor deliver them intelligibly. A type of this 
international charlatan was one Ducoudray, who turned 
up with a contract signed by the American agent in 
Paris, Silas Deane. By virtue of this, he claimed rank 
as a major-general and commander-in-chief of the 
American artillery and engineers. He dazed Wash- 
ington with the tidings that one hundred of his old 
companions-in-arms would presently arrive from France 



94 STORYOF OUR ARMY 

to act as his personal staff — with pay! After much 
wrangling with Congress, the Ducoudray case was set- 
tled by that officer's horse, which becoming fractious, 
leaped from a ferry-boat into the Schuylkill and 
drowned his rider. 

Not all the foreign soldiers who came to our aid 
were of this type. The United States rejoices to honor 
the names of DeKalb, Von Steuben, Kosciusko, Pulaski, 
and above all, Lafayette. The last named was, in fact, 
an aristocrat by birth, his wife a daughter of the Due 
d'Ayen; himself a frequenter of the court of Louis 
XVI and, with his wife, an intimate of Marie An- 
toinette. He was, however, a sturdy republican, defied 
the prohibition of the French court, and out of his 
private means purchased a vessel and made his way to 
the shores of America. He offered his services as a 
volunteer, and though coldly received by Congress, was 
finally commissioned a major-general without pay. 
Washington quickly perceived the nobility of his 
character; he, for his part, made Washington his hero 
and his model, until in the end their relations were 
those of father and son. 

It was, of course. General Howe's business to ascend 
the Hudson and aid Burgoyne. That he did not do so 
was the wonderment of Washington, who, more than 
once suspecting a ruse, made his dispositions to contest 
the Hudson with the British. An old bush-fighter him- 
self, Washington knew that Burgoyne could not make 
his way through the woods of northern New York 
alone. Even when Howe, with 228 sail, took his 
eighteen thousand men out to sea through the Nar- 
rows, seemingly bent on proceeding against Philadel- 
phia, Washington was skeptical. " I can not help cast- 
ing my eyes behind me," he wrote. Howe wrote a 
note to Burgoyne, saying that he had gone with his 
troops to Boston and would march thence to the Hud- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 95 

son, and contrived to have the note fall into Washing- 
ton's hands. But the " Old Fox," as Cornwallis called 
him, was not fooled. He at once concluded that Howe 
had gone to attack Philadelphia, which was in fact the 
case. 

Just why Howe attached so much Importance to 
Philadelphia, a study of the military conditions of the 
time does not explain. It was temporarily, at least, 
"the rebel capital," but that capital was as peripatetic 
as a circus, being established wherever the Congress 
thought it could sit without danger. Perhaps he was 
influenced by the " plan of campaign " prepared for his 
guidance by his precious captive, Charles Lee, in which 
great stress was laid upon the wisdom of taking Phila- 
delphia. More probable it is, that Sir William, who 
was a valiant trencherman, an habitue of London clubs, 
thought it pleasanter to have a city to winter in, than 
to shiver in the tented field. Boston had sheltered him 
the first winter; New York, the second, and he now 
forehandedly looked forward to Philadelphia. 

There was perhaps as little reason why Washington 
should oppose his taking the city as there was for Howe 
to seek it. To begin with he could not have barred 
Howe's entrance had he desired, for the general's 
brother, Admiral Howe, was there with a fleet ready to 
sweep aside the flimsy defences of the Chesapeake and 
take the city by water, even if there should be diflliculty 
in taking it by land. For that matter, even if Wash- 
ington took the city himself, he would not be able to 
hold it with the fleet at its very water-front. But the 
American commander felt that the temper of the people 
made some sort of a movement of the American troops 
necessary. He had not yet heard of the destruction of 
Burgoyne in the north, and when the news came the 
people began to decry Washington and exalt Gates — 
of whom all that can be said is, that he did not prevent 



96 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

his division commanders from winning battles for him, 
though he was careful to take all the credit for victory 
to himself. 

Because of these various considerations, more politi- 
cal than military, Washington, as soon as he was con- 
vinced that Howe's objective was Philadelphia, began 
moving the Continental army thither. By way of en- 
couraging the Patriots, and overawing the Tory resi- 
dents of that town, he marched his entire army, at that 
time numbering about eleven thousand men, through its 
streets. The effect may be doubted. The Americans 
were sorely tattered, armed as variously as Falstaff's 
" Rogues in buckram," and for lack of distinguishing 
uniform, were constrained to wear a sprig of green in 
their hats by way of cockade. However ill-clad and 
equipped the Continentals might be, however, they were 
abundantly ready for battle, and after passing through 
Philadelphia took up a position south of Wilmington, 
Delaware, to await the unfolding of Howe's plans. 
This was not quick in coming. Howe was not swift in 
action and gave no heed to the doctrine that the highest 
strategy was " to get there first with the most men." He 
had idled about New York for six weeks, while poor 
Burgoyne's army was crumbling In the northern woods. 
After he had made his way into the Delaware River, 
he hesitated a time, then put his ships about and after 
a twenty-four days' voyage landed his weary army at 
Elkton, just thirteen miles from the point he had at- 
tained on the Delaware. Washington was puzzled by 
his disappearance from the Delaware and concluded 
that he had gone south to capture Charleston. The 
fleet was discovered just in time to prevent the Ameri- 
can army from returning to New York to contest with 
Clinton the control of the Hudson. 

Howe's voyage had been perilous and tiring as well 
as needless. He had exposed to the perils of a voyage 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 97 

of 350 miles nearly 230 vessels with their ships' com- 
panies and eighteen thousand troops. Almost 
universally the men were seasick, and the weather, when 
not tempestuous, was torrid. The crowded 'tween 
decks of the ships was fetid — almost as bad as the 
hold of a West Indian slaver. Water ran low, hun- 
dreds of horses were thrown overboard as a more 
humane action than letting them die of thirst. As the 
fleet edged its slow way along, row-boats plied between 
the vessels begging a keg of water here and there, or 
a few provisions. After eight and twenty days of this 
sort of progress Howe disembarked his troops, having 
made just thirteen miles by the voyage. And far away 
in the forests of northern New York poor Burgoyne 
was hoping that this very body of men was coming 
swiftly up the Hudson to save him from total destruc- 
tion. 

Having disembarked his forces, Howe rested 
on his arms another week. Washington, meantime, 
took up a position at Chadd's Ford on the Brandywine, 
twenty-six miles from Philadelphia. In his immediate 
front the creek was placid and shallow, but at the point 
where the American left rested, it was a brawling stream 
flowing through a rocky gorge. The right flank was 
less well protected. It rested on the river two miles 
farther up, and it was thought, incorrectly, that there 
were no fords in the vicinity. Washington had about 
eleven thousand men; Howe, about eighteen thousand. 

After reconnoitring the position, Howe decided to 
attack it by the left flank. He was much given to 
flank attacks, and had routed the American army at 
Long Island by this simple and popular device. The 
flank was defended by General Sullivan who, though 
a gallant soldier and desperate fighter, was not fortu- 
nate In the defence of flanks. It was he whom Howe 
had crumpled up at Long Island. Now he was igno- 



98 STORYOFOURARMY 

rant of the existence of two fords above him, and 
worse than that, when Washington was about to act on 
knowledge of the flanking movement, sent him word 
that there were no British on the left. The message 
had hardly been delivered when Cornwallis fell upon 
Sullivan and rolled his lines away. 

Washington had determined to meet the flank move- 
ment of Cornwallis by crossing the ford in his front 
and attacking Knyphausen, who commanded the British 
centre. It is obvious strategy when your enemy has 
marched away with the greater part of his army to 
attack the weakened division he left behind. Had 
Washington adhered to his purpose his chances of vic- 
tory would have been good, for the Americans were 
not seriously outnumbered by the enemy in their front. 
Unfortunately, just as Washington was about to move, 
the incorrect information was received from Sullivan. 
Washington stopped in perplexity. If Howe had not 
detached any part of his force for an attack in flank, 
then the enemy in front must be too strong for him. 
While he hesitated, the clatter of musketry to his left 
gave tidings that Sullivan had erred. Lafayette was 
hurried forward to aid the stricken flank, and was 
promptly wounded. General Greene followed him, 
and then Washington, though Knyphausen was attack- 
ing him in front, made for the place of greatest danger. 
Not knowing the quickest way he pressed an old farmer, 
named Brown, into service as guide. Mounted on a 
cavalry charger, which took the fences as he encoun- 
tered them. Brown though expostulating loudly still 
led the general straight. He had no chance to escape, 
for Washington kept the nose of his own horse close to 
the terrified farmer's knee and rode hard, crying con- 
tinually, "Push along, old man! Push along!" 

The defeat of the Patriot army was complete. That 
it was not a disastrous rout was due to the celerity with 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 99 

which Greene and his Virginians secured a strong posi- 
tion in front of Cornwallis, and the stubbornness with 
which he held it until darkness put an end to the battle. 
Sullivan, to whose earlier error was doubtless due the 
disaster of the day, fought like a lion throughout the 
action — a fact that was much to his advantage when 
the inquiry into the battle was subsequently held. The 
valor of these generals and Washington's cool strategy, 
which never failed in the darkest hours, saved the army, 
which in the end got away in fairly good order to 
Chester. But the British held the field; while their loss 
had been nearly six hundred, the Americans lost more 
than one thousand including prisoners, and the road 
to Philadelphia was wide open to the British column. 

As usual Howe hesitated to follow up his advantage. 
He had eighteen thousand men to Washington's nine 
thousand, and it would have seemed could have annihil- 
ated the American army and ended the war. Yet it 
was Washington who first prepared to renew hostil- 
ities, but was balked by a fierce rainstorm which de- 
stroyed the ammunition of his army and made the mus- 
kets useless. Accordingly, he retired again. General 
Howe being savagely critcised for his escape. " We 
are told," said the British critics, " that the Americans 
have no bayonets, but greatly excel our soldiers in 
marksmanship. Here they were with useless guns, no 
means of defence, and General Howe still permits them 
to escape." 

Escape they did. General Wayne being left behind 
as a rear guard, with instructions to cut off Howe's bag- 
gage trains. This officer was popularly known as 
" Mad Anthony " Wayne, because of his zest for bat- 
tle, but this time he had his fill of the business of 
slaughter. His troops, about 1,500 in all, were en- 
camped about a tavern at Paoli and, the night being 
wet, had been directed to wrap their overcoats about 



100 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

their cartridges. While thus encumbered they were 
fiercely assaulted by General Grey. This British offi- 
cer shared his people's fondness for the bayonet, and 
had forced his troops to unload their muskets and even 
remove the flints, so that no untimely discharge should 
arouse the Americans. Charging with cold steel, they 
carried all before them, but Wayne, fighting with gal- 
lantry managed to save his artillery but lost some 
three hundred men. About sixty of these were killed 
outright, and so large a percentage of fatalities caused 
the affair to be known as the " Paoli massacre," while 
Grey, who seems indeed to have been an honest soldier 
and gentleman, gained the nickname of " the prisoner 
killer." 

Howe was now approaching Philadelphia near-by, 
and it was apparent that Washington could not prevent 
his capture of the city. There was panic among the 
citizens who had been loyal to the American cause and 
who had heard with horror of the treatment of private 
property by the Hessians. Congress, of course, fled 
precipitately and was followed by hundreds of citizens, 
who felt that their wealth or their activity in the Pa- 
triot cause had marked them for persecution. The town- 
crier went about the streets ringing his bell and calling 
upon every man who could carry a gun to join in muster 
at the common — a very futile command, for none ap- 
peared. Instead the town, which was largely Tory, 
greeted the British entrance with loud acclaim — not an 
unusual procedure, for all through history we find cap- 
tured cities striving to win the favor of the conqueror 
by extravagant expressions of joy. The British 
marched in with a splendor contrasting vividly with 
Washington's parade of patriotic tatterdemalions a few 
weeks earlier. The soldiers wore their best scarlet and 
the bands, which were many, discoursed the patriotic 
airs of England. Everybody was agog to see the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS loi 

Hessians. " Their looks to me were terrific," wrote 
a gentleman, who, as a boy of ten, witnessed the spec- 
tacle. ". . . their brass caps, their mustachios, 
their countenances by nature morose, and their music 
that sounded in better English than they themselves 
could speak, 'Plunder! Plunder! Plunder!'" 

Settling down to the occupation of Philadelphia, 
Howe protected himself by stationing a strong detach- 
ment at Germantown, commanding the roads into the 
city from the north. Washington looked upon this 
outpost and thought the chance of destroying it good. 
Moreover, he wanted to combat the depressing effect 
upon the army and the country of the reverses at 
Brandywine and Paoli. The British had not fortified 
themselves in any fashion, but their troops were en- 
camped about the mansion of Benjamin Chew, then 
Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. This house with its 
massive stone walls was destined to play a considerable 
part in history. 

The night of October 3, the Americans, about ten 
thousand in number with forty field pieces, took up 
their march. The bustle in their camp had been re- 
ported to Howe, who had warned his generals to be 
on the alert. Marching all night they came into col- 
lision with the enemy at sunrise, but so heavy a fog 
filled the air that men were scarcely visible at twenty 
yards. At first all went well for the Americans, though 
the fog told heavily against their plan of attack by 
converging columns. Sullivan's troops drove that part 
of the British line they first encountered back for a 
full mile. There Musgrave for a time checked the 
American advance but soon gave way. At that mo- 
ment Sir William Howe came on the scene, mighty 
wrathful to find his troops retreating. " For shame. 
Light Infantry ! " he cried, " I never saw you retreat 
before. Form ! Form ! It is only a scouting party." 



102 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

At that moment an American battery opened with grape 
on the general and his staff, and they, too, vanished in 
the fog. 

At this moment combined good fortune for the 
British and bad judgment for the Americans, saved the 
day for the former. Colonel Musgrave with six com- 
panies of British regulars were surrounded, and seemed 
to have no alternative but surrender, when opportunity 
came for them to fight their way into the Chew house. 
Quickly they barricaded the doors, manned the win- 
dows and prepared to stand a siege. The main body 
of the British army was now in full retreat, despite the 
presence of the commander-in-chief. The obvious 
thing to do was to press on and cut them to pieces, 
leaving this inconsiderable force in the rear. But 
there is a military maxim against leaving a hostile forti- 
fied point behind an advancing army, and it appealed 
strongly to the book soldiers in Washington's army. 
"What," cried Colonel Joseph Reed, " call this a fort 
and lose the happy moment ! " Unfortunately, this 
was precisely what was done. Behind the massive 
stone walls of the mansion Musgrave's men kept the 
greater part of the American force busy, until Corn- 
wallis arrived from Philadelphia with a division of 
light horse. Then the British rallied and drove the 
Americans back. The fighting about the house was 
savage in the extreme. A boyish American officer, 
advancing with a white flag was shot dead for the 
nature of his colors was not discernable in the dense 
fog. Then the American cannon opened. They blew 
in the doors, did havoc with window casings, but had 
no effect on the stout walls. Piles of mahogany furni- 
ture barricaded the entrance, and one after another 
American storming parties were repulsed with heavy 
loss. One officer, carrying straw and a lighted torch, 
was slain by a shot fired upward through a cellar grating, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 103 

as though Hades Itself had joined in the defence. 
When the battle ended fifty-three lay dead on the lawn, 
and four prone across the very doorsill. So loud was 
the firing at this point that regiments and divisions lost 
in the fog, thinking that the centre of battle, groped 
their way thither. As a result three thousand Ameri- 
can troops that should have been pressing on the main 
attack, were engaged with Musgrave's handful of in- 
fantry. 

Failing ammuniticn and the new strength of the 
British at length decided the issue of battle, Washing- 
ton was the promptest of men to recognize the need 
for retreat when It became inevitable. In this in- 
stance he quickly had his lines reformed and marched 
to safety, saving all his cannon. But his loss was 
heavy. Four hundred Americans had been taken 
prisoners, six hundred killed or wounded. The British 
loss was only half as great. Both sides united in caring 
for the wounded and there Is a ghastly light thrown on 
battle-field surgery by this note left by a spectator: " I 
went to see Dr. Foulke amputate an American soldier's 
leg which he completed in twenty minutes, while the 
physician at the military hospital was forty minutes 
performing an operation of the same nature." There 
was no ether, nor other merciful anaesthetic in those 
days. 

The results of the Battle of Germantown were curi- 
ously diverse. The military effect might have been 
serious had Howe followed it up with sledge-hammer 
blows, as nearly a century later Grant did In fighting 
an enemy no less brilliant and resourceful than Wash- 
ington. Upon the American soldiers the effect was 
stimulating. Though defeated they knew it had been 
by a " scratch," and they were proud of a general who 
even in retreat could thus turn and hammer his ad- 
versary. In Europe the fact that Washington had 



I04 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

thus shown again the dash and spirit he had manifested 
at Trenton and Princeton was generally applauded. 
The recognition of the United States by France, which 
presently followed, was not a little hastened by this 
evidence that the Americans refused to recognize 
defeat. But the American politician in Congress re- 
mained sceptical, sneered at Fabian tactics and hinted 
at Washington's incapacity. 

Though Howe was now snug in Philadelphia, he 
was not yet comfortable there. His addition of some 
twenty thousand men to the population of that city 
made the question of subsistence a serious one. Living 
on the surrounding country was made difficult by the 
close presence of the American army, and also by the 
fact that the farmers of the neighborhood were not 
altogether favorable to the cause of the King — though 
indeed, the surroundings of Philadelphia were more 
Tory than Patriot. True, Howe's brother with his 
fleet controlled the ocean, and the waterways leading to 
Philadelphia, save at a point a few miles below the city 
where the Americans had obstructed the channel and 
built defensive works on the banks. It was evident 
that these obstructions must be swept away if the 
British were to enjoy the winter of gaiety and good 
cheer they had planned. 

The Patriot works in the Delaware consisted of two 
forts, Mifflin, on the Pennsylvania shore, and Mercer, 
at Red Bank on the New Jersey shore. At various 
points the channel was obstructed by driving steel- 
pointed piles Into the bed, at an angle of about forty- 
five degrees with the points directed down stream, so 
that any ascending ship would be impaled, and either 
sunk or held a fair target for the guns of the forts. 
An incomplete fort stood at Billingsport on the Jersey 
side, but this was at once taken by the British and the 
chevaux de frise in the channel before it removed. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 105 

This left the two other forts blocking the waterway to 
Philadelphia. Their possession was all-important. 
" Upon taking them," wrote Washington, " depends 
all the enemy's hopes of keeping Philadelphia and finally 
succeeding." Accordingly, the Americans threw strong 
garrisons into both forts, and further strengthened 
them by a mongrel fleet, consisting of one good frigate, 
and a number of floating batteries, xebecques, fireships, 
galleys, gondolas, and other bizarre craft of the day. 
The flotilla might have been of some service had its 
commander thought fit to bring it into action on the 
day of battle. But it was as badly manned as com- 
manded, most of its defenders being landsmen, who 
had been moved to enlist by a glowing advertisement 
which offered them a month's pay In advance and " a 
dollar's worth of drink to drown sorrow and drive 
away care." 

Sir William Howe was not less aware than was 
Washington of the importance of these forts and, over- 
coming his natural tendency to delay, began on the day 
he entered Philadelphia his preparations for their reduc- 
tion. Lord Howe brought his fleet back into the 
Delaware and soon lay at anchor just out of range of 
the American cannon. The fleet was to keep Fort 
Mercer busy by a lively cannonade of its water-front, 
while Colonel Von Donop with two thousand Hessian 
bayonets was to carry the works by assault. For this 
employment Von Donop had petitioned Howe. The 
Hessians were somewhat in disrepute In the British 
camp, and he desired to reestablish them. The fort 
was garrisoned by about four hundred Rhode Island 
troops under command of Colonel Christopher Greene. 

About four of the afternoon of the 22d of October, 
Colonel Von Donop aligned his men before the fort, 
and sent forward two of his staff officers to parley. 
After berating the garrison as rebels, they were suna- 



io6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

moned to surrender with the warning that " if they 
stood the battle, no quarter whatever should be shown 
them." That was rather unusual savagery, but the 
Americans shouted back defiance, and the Hessians 
cheering wildly, and declaring the fort should soon be 
rechristened Fort Von Donop, rushed boldly to the 
assault. Greene, knowing that his force was inadequate 
to man the whole range of walls, had withdrawn his 
troops into the inner fort, and from its parapet watched 
the advancing foe. One word of counsel he gave to 
his men ere the clash — a direction to be ranked with 
the Bunker Hill command, " Don't fire until you see 
the whites of their eyes." " Fire low, my men," said 
Greene. " They have a broad belt just above the hips. 
That is where you must aim." 

When the advancing Hessians found the outer line 
of breastworks undefended, they thought the garrison 
had fled in panic. In the intoxication of victory they 
cheered, danced, threw caps in air, and came on like a 
torrent. Speedily they were undeceived. Their fur- 
ther path was obstructed by fallen trees and sharp 
spikes. Entangled in these they received the first 
deadly volley delivered in accordance v/ith Greene's 
shrewd order. Officers and men went down in heaps. 
Three colonels fell together. Though they rallied for 
another rush the Americans had reloaded and again 
they went down in crimson carnage. After the fashion 
of the German soldiers they were encumbered by huge 
knapsacks and heavy leathern hats. They had no 
scaling ladders, and loaded down as they were, had no 
chance of climbing the smooth wall that confronted 
them. Von Donop fell early in the action. His 
routed followers sought to escape the trap by running 
around to the river side of the fort, but there they en- 
countered the American galleys which rowed close in 
shore and poured upon them murderous volleys. On 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 107 

few battle fields has the carnage been more frightful. 
In forty minutes all of the Hessians who were able to 
walk had fled. They were not content with merely 
retiring out of the field of fire. They plodded on 
through the night until they reached the ferry which 
took them across the Delaware to safety. 

One hundred and twenty-seven dead Hessians lay 
within the outer walls of the fort. The wounded had 
been helped away by their companions in arms, but of 
these twenty-two were buried by the roadside, and sixty, 
too spent to march even with help, were left behind. 
Out of a pile of dead the American soldiers dragged 
poor Von Donop, fatally wounded. They could not 
forbear reminding him of his threat of no quarter. 
" I am in your hands," said he. " Do with me as you 
will." He was tenderly cared for but died on the 
third day. It had been a sorry day for the Hessians, 
but there was profit in it for the serene Landgrave, who 
had sold them to the British to make food for cannon. 
He was to get an extra thirty crowns each for his be- 
loved subjects killed in battle. Their families got 
nothing. 

It was a sorry moment for the British. The naval 
attack on Fort Mifflin had failed, and a ship-of-the-line 
and a cruiser were destroyed by fire. Just at this junc- 
ture, too, the British learned of Burgoyne's surrender, 
which sorely depressed them. There was talk in the 
American camp of attacking the enemy, but Washing- 
ton felt the risk was too great. Indeed, events were 
sufliciently making Howe's position uncomfortable 
without any new American hostilities. The day of 
high prices had come upon Philadelphia, and the pinch 
of starvation would next be felt unless the Delaware 
could be opened. So it was determined to assault the 
barrier again, Fort Mifflin being this time the point 
of attack. That work had been so located that it could 



io8 STORY OF OUR ARMY ^«» 

41 

be commanded both by shore batteries and the British 

fleet, and the enemy having built the former and moved 
the latter into position, began a savage fire on the 
works. It is estimated that for a time over a thousand 
shot passed over or fell into the fort every twenty 
minutes. For several days this furious cannonade was 
kept up, destroying all edifices within the works and 
levelling the redoubts to the ground. The vessels 
could approach so closely that marines in the tops could 
shoot down into the fort. By such a shot Colonel 
Smith was wounded, and Major Thayer took his place. 
There was, indeed, little to do but to stick. To reply 
to the fire was impossible. To save lives Thayer sent 
away all his men save forty, and with these completed 
the destruction of the fort and retired at dead of night. 
Not long thereafter Cornwallis, with five thousand 
men, was sent to attack Fort Mercer, but that post was 
no longer worth the price of its defence and it was 
accordingly abandoned. 

Winter was now approaching and the two armies 
prepared to meet it in very different fashions. The 
British were quite comfortable in Philadelphia with the 
river open for supplies, and with the foe in their front 
hardly likely to attack them. The finest houses in the 
city were commandeered for officers' quarters. For 
every inhabitant over ten years of age there was now 
one British soldier — for the mass of the citizens who 
were Patriots had departed after the Brandywine battle. 

But there was plenty of gaiety. The store of old 
madeira in Philadelphia had long been famous, and 
there were balls at the City Tavern, sport at the cock- 
pit, a new race course especially constructed for the 
pleasure of the red-coated officers, faro and other games 
of chance everywhere, and above all, hosts of young 
ladies, even among the Patriots, who did not scorn a 
dance with a scarlet coat plentifully bedecked with 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 109 

gold braid. British commissaries of prisoners grew 
rich feeding American prisoners in Walnut Street jail 
on rats and garbage. The professional gamblers 
revelled in luxury, though more than one young officer 
was compelled to sell his commission and go home, 
ruined by a unlucky turn of the cards at faro. Women 
of that class that follows an army were much in evi- 
dence, and the mistress of one officer created a sensa- 
tion by driving along the lines at a review dressed in an 
adaptation of the uniform of her patron's regiment. 

The American army faced a winter of a very dif- 
ferent sort. Yet Valley Forge, the name of which 
has passed into our national tradition as a synonym for 
bitter privation and cruel suffering, was by nature well 
fitted for a winter's encampment. A hill, steep on the 
side toward the enemy, sloped gently down to the 
Schuylkill River. Here the Americans built log huts 
and threw up intrenchments — it was the common jest 
among the enemy that the Patriots never went into 
camp for a night without building defensive works. 
The men who settled down in these huts to await the 
winter were ill-clad, half-shod, staining the icy roads 
with their blood as they walked. Two days before 
Christmas Washington reported 2,898 men as unfit for 
duty for lack of shoes and other needful articles of 
clothing. Although they were in an excellent situation 
for obtaining food from the country-side they had no 
money to obtain it, and the hard money dispensed at 
Philadelphia tempted the farmers to take their produce 
thither for sale. The American Commissary Mifflin, 
had thought to show his disapprobation of Washing- 
ton by resigning his office, and that important branch 
of the service was therefore in a state of chaos. Wash- 
ington expressed his apprehension that the army would 
" starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain sub- 
sistence." Indeed, the tattered ranks did begin to melt 



no STORY OF OUR ARMY 

away. Galloway, an American, who had been ap- 
pointed by Howe chief of police of Philadelphia, re- 
ported that over two thousand American soldiers came 
to his office for help. Many of them were bareheaded, 
barefooted, with ragged blankets for overcoats and 
ready to sell their guns to buy necessaries. Besides 
those who deserted to the lines of the enemy, there 
were hundreds who simply went home. The American 
patriot was a farmer first — a soldier only when he 
thought it needful. Ready enough on the march or in 
the attack, he could not understand the necessity of 
clinging to a camp through a cold and hungry winter 
when his own warm farmhouse awaited him with plenti- 
ful good cheer. So every winter Washington's lines 
dwindled while the yeomanry went home to return 
again when the sun of springtime made life in the field 
tolerable. 

But this winter of 1777-78 saw the heaviest of these 
annual losses. It is, indeed, a wonderful tribute to the 
loyalty of the men and to the genius of Washington 
for inspiring devotion, that any remained. A Euro- 
pean officer, serving with the troops, tells of a sentry, 
his feet tied up in rags, his coat tattered and open to the 
icy winds, his red and frost-nipped hands ungloved, 
pacing his beat, and singing a song in praise of the 
commander-in-chief! In February, 1778, Washing- 
ton reported " a part of the army had been a week 
without any kind of flesh and the rest three or four 
days." From the huts rose doleful cries of " No 
meat! No meat! " and the Americans, more used to 
a flesh diet than the peasantry of Europe, found but an 
unsatisfactory substitute in soaked wheat and sugar, or 
flour paste. Once an officer, seeing a kettle boiling 
merrily, asked one of the soldiers in the group what 
they were cooking. " A stone. Colonel," was the 
reply. " They say there is great strength in that if you 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS iii 

can get it out." The jest was not more grim than the 
reality. 

Of clothing the soldiers were equally destitute. In 
November, 1777, Washington formally offered a re- 
ward of ten dollars to the one who should produce the 
best substitute for shoes made of raw hides. He de- 
clared that for lack of blankets they were obliged to 
sit up all night before the fires. Anthony Wayne, in 
a rage, reported that a third of his men had " no shirt 
under heaven," and that their clothes were in ribbons. 
Lafayette told of poor fellows whose feet were frozen 
black and had to be amputated. When a soldier's turn 
for picket duty came his comrades who were to stay 
in the warm hut, contributed articles of clothing that 
he might withstand the cold. Naturally, amidst such 
pinching want, the hospitals were pest houses. The 
worst of it all was that hogsheads of shoes and raiment 
were ready for the camp, but there was no way of get- 
ting them hauled to it. " Perhaps by midsummer," 
wrote Washington, " the soldiers may receive thick 
stockings, shoes, and blankets, which he will contrive 
to get rid of in the most expeditious manner. By an 
eternal round of the most stupid management the pub- 
lic treasure is expended to no kind of purpose, while the 
men have been left to perish by inches with cold and 
nakedness." 

Why General Howe, with his twenty thousand well 
fed and accoutred men, did not attack the half-frozen, 
half-starved, and wholly dispirited American army — 
which at one time numbered barely four thousand — 
is one of the puzzles of history. In his later defence 
before the House of Commons, the British general laid 
great stress on Washington's redoubts, giving thereby 
some force to the American theory that the redoubt at 
Bunker Hill permanently shattered Howe's nerve. It 
is more probable, however, that the general, who at 



112 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

home was one of the Whigs who disapproved of the 
war upon the colonies, sincerely believed that moderate 
measures would lead the Americans to listen favorably 
to the proposals for peace which he put forth as soon 
as he was established In Philadelphia. Indeed, in his 
defence, he said that, " A check at this moment would 
probably counteract His Majesty's intentions of prepar- 
ing the way for the return of peace by the bills pro- 
posed." These bills were parliamentary measures for 
a peace commission to negotiate for a compromise. 
But bitter as was the state of the Patriot army in this 
winter of discontent, there was no thought of compro- 
mise. All felt that as soon as the news of Burgoyne's 
surrender reached Europe, France at least would recog- 
nize the colonies as independent and come to their 
aid — which indeed turned out to be the fact. 

But throughout the cold and cruel winter Washing- 
ton expected an attack by Howe, and privately ex- 
pressed the opinion that it could not be resisted. To 
both parties, Patriot and Tory, the lethargy of the 
British general was inexplicable. Much was made of 
the fact that a fine setter dog, wearing a collar showing 
him to be the property of General Howe, strolled one 
day into the American camp and was politely sent back 
to his master. From this it was argued that an under- 
standing existed between the hostile generals, and an 
absurd story became current that Washington would 
occasionally visit the city incog, and accompany Howe 
to the theatre. 

As a matter of fact, Washington was using the win- 
ter tb drill such a fragment of his army as remained 
into the semblance of regular soldiers. With the butt 
of his musket at his shoulder and his eye seeking the 
sight, the American soldier was a man to beware of. 
But when it came to the manual of arms, he was a man 
to laugh at. To correct this, Baron Von Steuben, one 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 113 

of the really devoted foreign volunteers who lent us 
their aid, undertook to be drill-master, and with a mus- 
ket in his hands taught the lieutenants, who, in turn, 
were to teach the privates. As the winter wore on, 
too, Washington, despairing of getting proper supplies 
through the established commissaries, took matters into 
his own hands, and sent out his ablest officers to gather 
provisions from those sections of New Jersey and Penn- 
sylvania which had been feeding the British. Desti- 
tute of money, the foragers paid in promissory notes 
which in due time were honored. They gathered good 
store of cattle, sheep and swine, and wagonloads of 
grain. Moreover, they captured supplies that were 
on their way to Philadelphia, thereby filling their own 
larders besides depleting those of the enemy. The 
soldiers engaged in this work were called in Philadel- 
phia " market stoppers," and when caught were be- 
decked with vegetables and market baskets, and paraded 
through the city streets before being whipped and sent 
to prison. The Americans, in retaliation, when they 
caught a Tory farmer taking goods to the British camp, 
would brand him in the hand with the letters G. R., and 
send him into the enemy's lines. The results of the 
Patriot forays were to so replenish the Valley Forge 
larder that in the spring each private received daily a 
pound and a half of bread, a pound of beef or fish or 
pork and beans, and a gill of whiskey. The " water 
wagon " formed no part of the Patriot baggage train. 
With the coming of spring many things occurred to 
give new confidence to the Patriots and to swell their 
ranks. Divers cabals and political intrigues against 
Washington, which were at the time so numerous as 
to make discussion of them impossible in a brief his- 
torical work, had failed, and brought upon their authors 
such odium that Congress thereafter forebore to med- 
dle with the commander-in-chief and gave him a free 



114 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

hand. The quartermaster's department had at last 
been properly organized, and with Valley Forge no 
longer a starvation camp, the soldiers came trooping 
back. But most stimulating of all the happenings 
was the news which reached Washington on May i, 
1778, that a treaty of commerce and alliance had been 
concluded with France. Every soldier was enough of 
a politician to know that this meant substantial aid in 
the way of men, money, ships, and munitions of war. 
The camp was wild with enthusiasm. A day of 
thanksgiving was set, and after due praise and prayer 
a banquet was served to 1,500 officers who marched 
to the table thirteen abreast with arms locked in token 
of the Union of the thirteen states. A British spy, 
being detected in camp, was given his liberty upon con- 
dition that he would return to Philadelphia and inform 
the British of the exultation of their enemy. 

But the British for their part were planning a more 
regal celebration of a very different event. Late in 
1777, Sir William Howe, being piqued at the tone of 
certain criticisms made upon his strategy, wrote a letter 
to the Ministry which might be constructed as a resig- 
nation. Lord George Germaine chose so to take it, 
and promptly sent an acceptance with an order that Sir 
Henry Clinton should assume command. Howe's offi- 
cers were sincerely grieved. Though all must have 
recognized his lack of vigor, and not a few had com- 
mented upon it, they all liked him as a man. Perhaps 
the fact that he had no zest for pushing them into 
uncomfortable positions — having spent his three winters 
In America's three largest towns — had something to do 
with this. At any rate they determined to make his 
last days in office glorious — not by winning a battle, 
which would have been a novel celebration — but with 
pageants and revelry. The outcome was the famous 
Meschianza — a combination of mock tournaments and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 115 

mock heroics, in which officers grouped as Knights of 
the Burning Mountain and Knights of the Blended 
Rose, rode caracoling steads in honor of rival Ameri- 
can and English Queens of Beauty. There was much 
braying of brass and glittering of tinsel, a mighty ban- 
quet with oceans of wine and volleys of fireworks, in 
which was consumed the gunpowder, which if turned 
against the Americans shivering at Valley Forge a few 
months earlier, might have changed the history of the 
world. The stage manager of the comedy was a bril- 
liant and lovable young officer, Major John Andre, 
who was destined some months later to play a star part 
in the sinister tragedy of the treason of Benedict 
Arnold. 

Howe sailed for England on the 24th of May. Sir 
Henry Clinton, who succeeded him, inherited a per- 
plexing situation. Washington's army was reinvigo- 
rated — one might almost say resurrected, so near had 
it been to death in the days of winter. His flying 
squadrons swept clear the neighboring portions of New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania whence Philadelphia had 
drawn its supplies, and Clinton was wholly dependent 
upon the Delaware as a pathway for his food and muni- 
tions of war. Even this road was not free and open, 
for both shores of the river were in possession of the 
Americans, who disputed with artillery, or by auda- 
cious expeditions in rowboats, the passage of cattle- 
ships or market boats. Out on the ocean, haunting the 
line between Sandy Hook and the capes of the Dela- 
ware, were flotillas of privateers which found large 
profits in preying upon ships carrying goods to Clinton. 
In one month nine big ships with cargoes valued at 
over $700,000 were thus taken. Seven loaded wholly 
with food and arms for the British troops were taken 
at one haul, and everything useful for Washington's 
men was dispatched direct to his camp. In his notable 



ii6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

book, " The Influence of Sea Power on History," Ad- 
miral Mahan estimates that by the end of 1778 the 
Americans had captured nearly a thousand merchant- 
men, valued at about $10,000,000. 

But more perplexing than these present ills was 
Clinton's outlook upon the future. He knew only too 
well that the French Comte d'Estaing, with twelve 
ships of the line, a large fleet of frigates, and four 
thousand infantry, was on the broad Atlantic headed 
for America. Should he arrive and seize New York, 
Clinton would lose his base of supplies and be starved 
into surrender at Philadelphia. The French fleet was 
too strong to be met and destroyed by Lord Howe's 
naval command, and whether it should take New York 
or merely blockade the mouth of the Delaware, the 
condition of Clinton's army would be alike hopeless. 
About this time a royal commission empowered to treat 
with Washington and Congress for peace — an em- 
bassy which was emphatically dismissed by both — ar- 
rived at Philadelphia, and Lord Carlisle, one of its 
members, recorded some facts which show the be- 
leaguered state of the British. He noted the chain of 
war vessels anchored in the river to protect trafl'ic, 
" for I am grieved," he wrote, " that both sides of the 
river are in possession of the enemy, who are well 
armed and absolutely prevent any intercourse whatever 
with the land." Later he rode out into the country. 
" This is market day," he wrote; " to protect the people 
bringing in provisions, which otherwise they would not 
dare to do, large detachments to the amount of above 
two thousand men, are sent forward into the country." 

This was almost two years to the day after the em- 
battled farmers fired the shot at Lexington. In those 
two years, the British had lost Boston, had left New 
York open to Washington's army, and lost Burgoyne's 
army and St. Leger's expedition, had been beaten at 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 117 

Bennington, Fort Stanwix, Bemis Heights, Saratoga, 
Princeton, and Trenton. Tlie only considerable monu- 
ment of British power remaining in America was this 
army of Clinton's that could not get a side of beef or 
a bushel of potatoes up the Delaware without a chain 
of warships, or over a Jersey road without an armed 
guard. 

Clinton determined to take his army to New York. 
The first question was — how? He had a fleet at his dis- 
posal, and it seemed easy to load the army with its 
stores and cannon on the ships and sail to the destina- 
tion. But what would Washington do meantime? 
Calms or adverse winds might delay the fleet for a 
month or more, and it then might arrive two or three 
ships at a time. Washington could get his sixteen 
thousand or eighteen thousand men there in a fortnight, 
fortify the Narrows, and keep the British at bay. Or 
D'Estaing's fleet might fall upon them on the way, or 
worse yet, might be already waiting in New York har- 
bor to take them at a disadvantage. Moreover, the 
Loyalists wanted to flee the city when abandoned, and 
would take up much of the room on the ships, while 
the army had accumulated several thousand horses, 
which could not be taken by water and which the 
Americans would be only too happy to get. So in the 
end Sir Henry determined to send his heavy guns by 
sea and march his army to New York, keeping it ever 
between Washington and that city. 

On the 1 8th of June Lord Howe, with his fleet and 
chartered merchantmen — three hundred sail in all — 
weighed anchor and dropped down the river. Aboard 
were about three thousand Loyalists, who fled from the 
wrath of the incoming Patriots. About the only inhabi- 
tants of Philadelphia who were calm and unperturbed 
were the Quakers. In their creed was provision neither 
for fighting nor for running away. It was the wise prac- 



ii8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tice of the American officers always to respect their 
scruples, and many Quakers served the American 
cause more effectively than if they had killed or been 
killed. Early on the same morning the Royal troops 
marched silently down the streets to the ferries and 
crossed over into New Jersey. There was none of the 
beat of drum and clash of brass that had signalled 
their entrance into the '* rebel capital " the preceding 
summer. They slipped away as though shod with 
rubber, and many honest citizens, emerging from their 
homes after the usual breakfast hour, were amazed to 
find the streets so deserted with never a scarlet coat or 
a Hessian helmet to be seen. 

Before many hours passed small bodies of the 
American troops marched into Philadelphia to take 
possession of the city. Washington kept the great 
body of his army together, as he intended to start im- 
mediately in pursuit of Clinton. The new American 
garrison found many evidences of the haste of the 
British flight. Salt was one of the great needs of the 
American army, and the fugitives had kindly left 
130,000 bushels of it, which they might easily have 
shovelled into the Schuylkill. Enormous quantities of 
military stores packed the depots to which no Redcoat 
had the foresight to apply the torch. The sutlers at- 
tached to Clinton's army, and the Tory merchants of 
the town who fled with the British, sold their stocks 
cheap to the shopkeepers who remained. All in all, 
the British evacuation of Philadelphia made for the 
advantage of the American army, save in one respect. 
Curiously enough Washington left the ideal fighter of 
that moment, Benedict Arnold, in command of the 
garrison, and took the marplot, Charles L ee, with him 
in pursuit of the British. Lee either blundered grossly 
or played the poltroon at the battle of Monmouth, 
putting the day in jeopardy. Arnold — more used to 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 119 

the tented field and the clash of battle than to social 
amenities — became the associate of such Tories as had 
remained behind, married a Tory belle, who had figured 
gaily in the Meschianza, and began to lose touch with 
patriotic sentiment. Some there are who date from 
this Philadelphia day the moral deterioration which 
ended in the treason of West Point. 

Nature and Washington combined to make Clinton's 
march to New York a miserable and a perilous one. 
First storms and then a blazing sun beat upon the 
British heads, while all the time the Americans hung 
on the flanks of the column, harassing it with constant 
rifle fire. The people of Jersey sent their families and 
livestock to places of safety, cut their well-ropes, hid 
everything eatable and rifle in hand nagged the British 
from behind stone-walls and protecting trees. It was 
like Pitcairn's flight from Lexington, long protracted. 
At one time rain fell for fourteen hours, spoiling the 
ammunition and supplies; immediately thereafter the 
sun blazed out fiercely. The heat broke all records. 
Men went down by scores, especially the poor Hessians 
still carrying the load of decoration which Frederick 
the Great thought necessary to a soldier. The wagon 
train was twelve miles long, and as often the roads and 
bridges were narrow, or the latter broken down by the 
active farmers, progress was slow and the infantry 
would stand for hours in the heat. The New Jersey 
mosquito, famous to the present day, was active in 
adding to the British discomfort. 

Within a few hours after Clinton's departure from 
Philadelphia Washington was hot upon his trail. 
Some dissension existed in the American ranks as to 
the wisdom of attacking the fugitives, but in a council 
of war Washington stood with Lafayette, Anthony 
Wayne, and Nathaniel Greene for a battle. The 
British line indeed invited a stroke. It was nearly 



I20 STORYOF OUR ARMY 

twenty miles long, encumbered with a baggage train 
and a host of non-combatant refugees, and destitute of 
cavalry force adequate to protect its flanks. Like a 
serpent it was formidable when gathered to strike, but 
extended could be broken in two by a blow at any part 
of the spine. Sir Henry Clinton was not blind to the 
peril of his situation, and on the 27th of June, having 
reached Monmouth Court House, he sent all his bag- 
gage train and the refugees forward on the road to 
Sandy Hook, and made his dispositions for battle. 
The surrounding country was swarming with Ameri- 
cans, and the garb of those observed made it clear that 
the advance of Washington's army was at hand. 

Charles Lee was in command of the first American 
division. His selection was a blunder. In the coun- 
cil he spoke warmly against any attack upon the British, 
saying it would be better to " build a bridge of gold " 
to carry them to New York than to risk a battle. Per- 
haps this idea was still uppermost in his mind when his 
division on the morning of the 28th was struck by 
Cornwallis, who brought his troops into action in gal- 
lant style. Lee proved utterly unable to meet the at- 
tack. Men said he showed the white feather and he 
was later court martialed on this and other charges and 
found guilty, though his partisans have always con- 
tended that on this point the evidence did not justify 
the conviction. At any rate Washington, coming up 
to a field on which he had every expectation of finding 
the Americans triumphant, found them instead in full 
retreat. There had been no battle, no sustained at- 
tack. Lee had given the order to turn and run almost 
at the first fire. Lafayette begged for permission to 
rally the men and fight. " Sir," replied Lee, " you do 
not know British soldiers. We cannot stand against 
them." At this juncture came up Washington. He 
was in no peaceful mood. Some of the soldiers had 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 121 

sulkily excused their retreat by reference to the gen- 
eral's (Lee's) orders. 

Washington's cold blue eye, which then flashed with 
rage, lighted upon Lee. " I desire to know, sir, what 
is the reason — whence arises this disorder and con- 
fusion?" he demanded. Lee responded with some 
equivocation. The discussion grew hot and in its 
course arrived the historic moment when — to the later 
delight of every American school-boy, wearied with 
the perfections of the Father of His Country — Wash- 
ington broke into oaths. 

"Yes, sir!" said General Scott, who witnessed the 
epoch-marking occurrence, " he swore on that day till 
the leaves shook on the trees, charmingly, delightfully. 
Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since. 
Sir, on that memorable day, he swore like an angel 
from heaven." 

With his spirit high from this encounter, Washing- 
ton rallied the troops for victory. " I never," said 
Alexander Hamilton, " saw him to such advantage." 
Lee was sent to the rear. The other brigade and 
division commanders, fired with new determination, 
pushed the British at every point, and they, for their 
part, showed great gallantry. Many of the knights 
of the Burning Mountain or of the Blended Rose 
found Monmouth's field of honor a fatal one. The 
fury of the conflict was made more dreadful by the 
excessive heat. Men dropped on both sides from sun- 
stroke and many went mad. Both Clinton and Wash- 
ington reported many deaths from the sun though the 
British, dressed in heavy wool, were the greater 
sufferers. 

After a long afternoon of carnage the two armies 
lay down practically on the same field, separated by 
but a few furlongs. Washington and Lafayette lay 
under the same cloak, sleepless and talking of the 



122 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

strange conduct of Lee. Perhaps the conversation 
dulled their ears, for the night was not half spent 
when Clinton began to withdraw his army. It was 
a retreat for silence and swiftness worthy of Wash- 
ington, and when the American army was astir in the 
morning, it found no British left in its front, save the 
dead, the sorely wounded, and the stragglers. Clinton 
was too far away for successful pursuit, speeding 
toward Sandy Hook where he hoped to find the Brit- 
ish fleet. 

Both belligerents claimed Monmouth as a victory. 
Clinton pointed out, with truth, that Washington had 
failed to check his progress to New York or to cap- 
ture his baggage — the two purposes of the attack. 
He also pointed with pride to the success with which 
he had stolen away, though a retreat however skilful 
seems an odd achievement on which to base a claim 
of victory. The Americans, on the other hand, 
claimed that their final possession of the field gave 
them the victory no less than the heavy losses they 
had inflicted on the enemy. But the estimates of losses 
were conflicting and remained so. Washington re- 
ported 60 killed, 130 wounded, and 130 missing. 
From the number of British dead his soldiers buried, 
he estimated Clinton's loss at about 300 killed, pos- 
sibly 1,000 wounded and a great number deserted. 
Clinton, however, reported 124 dead (59 from heat), 
170 wounded and 64 missing. He was quite certain 
that the American losses were greater. But whether 
estimated as a victory or as a drawn battle, the fight 
at Monmouth was of advantage to the Americans. 
Howe had been boasting that he continually dared the 
Americans to fight in the open, but that they clung to 
their breastworks. But here at Monmouth, the 
Americans had flung themselves across the British path 
and the latter had fled for safety by the shortest route. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 123 

To the world it appeared that they had been driven 
out of Philadelphia, badly cut up on their retreat and 
only reached New York in safety because of the succor 
of Lord Howe's fleet. 

That fleet was in waiting when Clinton's columns 
reached Sandy Hook. The army's coming was her- 
alded far in advance by the blazing farmhouses along 
its route. The British soldiers, and the German mer- 
cenaries in particular, pillaged and burnt without 
scruple or mercy. It is usually the case that soldiers 
who break over discipline in one particular are lax in 
all, and desertions from the British ranks ran up into 
the hundreds. It was said that two weeks after Sir 
Henry Clinton abandoned Philadelphia not less than 
six hundred Redcoats, mostly Germans, were again 
loafing in the streets of that city. Those who reached 
Sandy Hook were speedily taken up the bay to New 
York, in all about ten thousand men, with their ar- 
tillery and baggage. On the 6th of July, 1778, all 
were safe. It was the 30th of June, 1777, that Sir 
William Howe with seventeen thousand men had set 
sail from that port for Philadelphia. The year had 
been worse than fruitless and had D'Estaing's fleet, 
which reached Sandy Hook three days after Clinton 
had landed his troops in New York, been but a few 
days earlier the British army would have been 
destroyed then and there, and the Revolution ended. 
As it was, the blow to British prestige was mortal. 

" What," asked Horace Walpole, " has an army 
of fifty thousand men, fighting for sovereignty achieved 
in America? Retreated from Boston; retreated from 
Philadelphia; laid down their arms at Saratoga and 
lost thirteen provinces." 



CHAPTER VI 

The Wyoming Massacre — Services of George Rogers Clark — The 
War in the South — The French at Savannah — Defeat at Camden 
— The Victory at King's Mountain. 

The struggle of the American people for indepen- 
dence was destined to continue for a little more than 
three years. But these were years of desultory cam- 
paigns, of raiding expeditions, of ghastly massacres 
due to the British employment of the Indians, and of 
offensive operations in widely separated sections with 
no coherent plan. Never, after the downfall of Howe 
and the flight of Clinton, did the British Ministry plan 
another comprehensive campaign for the subjugation 
of the colonies. The English people were sick of the 
war. The great Whig party, though in the minority, 
opposed its continuance with the finest oratory of such 
statesmen as Pitt and Burke. England was without 
a friend in Europe — more isolated even than was our 
own United States at the opening of the Spanish War 
of 1898. France had made a treaty with the colonies, 
her friendly fleet was on our coasts and war between 
France and England was already a matter of fact, if 
not of formal declaration. Frederick the Great was 
encouraging France and the colonies and enriching 
military history with shrewd encomiums upon Wash- 
ington's strategy in the New Jersey campaigns. Out 
of this praise have grown certain legends, as that the 
King of Prussia sent to Washington a sword inscribed, 
" From the oldest soldier in Europe to the greatest 
soldier in the world." 

In this situation, torn by political dissensions at 

134 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 125 

home, menaced with new wars on every side, with 
Europe showing covert friendship to the Americans 
when it did not openly aid them, the English Ministry 
would probably have dropped the war altogether had 
it not been for King George. His temper was un- 
compromising. Even after the final collapse at York- 
town, when Lord North on receipt of the news cried 
wildly, "Oh God! It is all over!" the old King 
calmly declared his determination to proceed with the 
war. But after the evacuation of Philadelphia the 
Ministry made only a showing of military activity. 
There was fighting enough by sea and by land, and 
much of it was bloody and even barbarous. But ap- 
parently the sole British purpose was to harass the 
Americans, and the main endeavor of the latter was 
to resist stubbornly, until the enemy, exhausted by its 
conflict with France, should abandon its hopeless effort 
at coercion. The story of the Revolution from this 
time forward, therefore, is rather the story of notable 
battles than of campaigns. 

The first fruits of the French alliance proved wholly 
disappointing. The fleet under D'Estaing though a 
noble collection of vessels and superior to that com- 
manded by Lord Howe, reached the capes of the Dela- 
ware too late to intercept the English on their way to 
New York. Giving prompt pursuit, the French ar- 
rived after their enemy had found shelter behind 
Sandy Hook. Howe, an able sailor and a gallant 
man, had put his ships in excellent position to sustain 
an attack by even so superior a force as that of the 
French and undoubtedly expected it. But D'Estaing 
showed hesitancy about going into action. He pleaded 
that the channel was not deep enough for his heaviest 
vessels, and after backing and filling in the offing 
finally drew off and made for Newport. There has 
been much discussion of his action and the charge of 



126 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

timidity has been freely brought against him. There 
is evidence that at that season the channel depth was 
ample for any of his ships, and there is reason enough 
to believe that when he saw the superiority of his 
force offset by the strength of Howe's position, he 
had no stomach for the fight. His later career af- 
forded only too much corroboration of this theory. 

Newport had been seized by Lord Percy in Decem- 
ber, 1776, and was the only British stronghold on 
New England soil. Washington, who had marched 
his army from Monmouth to White Plains and was 
again in his old lines there, thought the capture of 
Newport a desirable exploit. The British now held 
only New York and this town, and expulsion from 
either would be a serious reverse. Accordingly, the 
New England militia to the number of about seventy- 
five hundred gathered at Providence, under command 
of General Sullivan. Washington sent fifteen hundred 
more, commanded by the veteran, Greene, who was 
accompanied by Lafayette. As D'Estaing had four 
thousand French infantry on his fleet, it was thought 
that with his cooperation the force would be ample 
to overcome the British garrison. 

The latter was commanded by General Pigot, who 
had succeeded a certain General Prescott of unsavory 
renown. The latter was a braggart, a bully, and as 
usually happens, a coward. He was much given to 
beating Quakers, who in accordance with the customs 
of their church, passed him on the street without un- 
covering, and he encouraged his soldiers in insulting 
women and plundering citizens. Being captured, 
without notable resistance on his part, he was given 
dinner at an inn kept by one Captain Alden. Mrs. 
Alden, among other dishes, offered him some succotash 
— a viand little known to the British. 

" What do you mean by offering me this hog's 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 127 

food? " roared the boor, snatching the dish and throw- 
ing it to the floor. The poor woman left the room 
in tears, but her husband entered in her place and with 
a rawhide lashed the general until he cried for mercy. 
The Americans shortly after exchanged him for Gen- 
eral Charles Lee, and it is hard to tell which got the 
worst of the bargain. 

General Pigot, his successor in command at New- 
port, was a soldier of parts. He had but about six 
thousand troops under his command and might fairly 
have faced the pending attack with grave apprehen- 
sion. But he acted with vigor and was destined to 
experience a new proof of the maxim, " Fortune favors 
the brave." Count d'Estaing, upon whose coopera- 
tion rested the whole promise of the American attack, 
was the most unlucky officer whose name appears in 
our revolutionary annals. By ill-luck he reached our 
waters only a day or two too late to meet and destroy 
Howe's fleet on its way to New York. Had he de- 
layed his departure from that port after his failure 
to fight, he could have easily picked up several British 
vessels which, sorely battered by wind and wave, came 
limping in to reenforce Howe and were in no condition 
for action. Now at Newport his bad luck — or bad 
judgment — pursued him. August loth had been set 
for the joint attack on Newport, and Sullivan's yeo- 
manry had indeed moved to a commanding hill on the 
7th. But on the afternoon of the loth, Lord Howe's 
fleet put in an appearance in the offing. That admiral 
had promptly put in condition the battered ships, which 
D'Estaing had missed, and thus reenforced, sailed at 
once for the relief of Newport. It was one of the 
most effective strokes of the war — one of the few 
times the British acted with celerity. 

D'Estaing had landed about half his troops, but 
fearing to be attacked at anchor recalled them and 



128 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

put to sea. That was the day when hostile squadrons 
manoeuvred interminably to get some advantage of 
wind or tide, and two days were spent by D'Estaing 
and Howe jockeying for the weather gage. In four 
hours Admiral Schley destroyed the whole of Cer- 
vera's fleet — ships any one of which could have 
annihilated all the French and British ships off New- 
port. While the two admirals were trying to get 
the right wind, the wind got them, for there blew up 
the mightiest tempest that stormy coast had known in 
a century. The fleets were blown apart and resolved 
into their original atoms of isolated ships, some of 
which met and fought futile fights. The British ships 
were widely scattered but most of the Frenchmen made 
their way back to Newport. 

The Americans, meantime, had suffered in their 
trenches from the tempest, which was recalled for 
half a century in Newport as " the great storm," and ■ 
had moved back some distance, fearing a sortie. See- 
ing the fleet return, they advanced again but learned 
to their amazement and disgust that D'Estaing had 
determined to abandon the attack and take his fleet 
to Boston. It appeared that the so-called admiral 
was really a military man; his captains were navy 
officers and combined to force him to this course seem- 
ingly against his will.- Sullivan, Lafayette, and the 
rest of the American officers naturally protested bit- 
terly. What was a French fleet sent here for, they 
asked, if not to fight? Thereupon the admiral declared 
himself insulted and with his fleet and troops departed 
for Boston. Shortly thereafter Howe returned to 
Newport and the Americans, seeing the opportunity 
to take the town lost retired, after a day's heavy 
fighting with Pigot's troops. 

In Boston the Frenchmen met with ill-concealed 
hostility. The street urchins mocked at the seamen 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 129 

and in a street riot a French officer was killed. The 
question, " What are the French here for if not to 
fight? " was repeatedly put, not alone in the Massachu- 
setts city but throughout the colonies. The Boston 
riot was paralleled in Charleston, South Carolina, and 
the ink was hardly dry on the treaty of alliance when an 
anti-French sentiment sprung up, bred almost wholly of 
D'Estaing's inactivity and avoidance of actual battle. 
He did participate in a dashing though futile assault 
upon the British at Savannah, but in November took 
his fleet to the West Indies. This last move ended 
D'Estaing's standing with the American people. The 
French fleet was as loudly cursed as once it had been 
prayed for, and no allowance was made for the fact 
that its attack upon the British West Indian posses- 
sions forced Clinton to send five thousand of his 
troops thither, and diverted for the time the attention 
of the British Ministry from the American colonies. 

The British now held only Newport and New York 
on the Atlantic coast. Away from the protection of 
their fleets they were powerless. Out in the Middle 
West they held some frontier posts, notably that at 
Detroit, and about these a guerilla warfare raged, 
the combatants being mainly Indians spurred on by 
the British, and American settlers. There was no or- 
ganization, no army involved. The colonies had no 
strong general government to map out and execute a 
general plan of defence, while the only tactics of the 
British were to harass the settlers in western New 
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky, and force 
them back from the lands which they had wrested 
from the forest, and upon which they were erecting 
the commonwealths of to-day. 

In northeastern Pennsylvania lies a fertile valley, 
watered by the broad, swift Susquehanna, which here 
thrusts its way through a water gap in the mountains. 



130 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

In 1778, this valley, known as the Wyoming Valley, 
was filled with settlers mainly from Connecticut, for 
by an early charter the region, though geographically 
part of Pennsylvania, had been granted to Connecticut. 
About three thousand people were there in all, and so 
overwhelmingly on the side of the Revolution, that 
they drove from their midst the few Tory families 
who dared avow their royalist convictions. The ex- 
pelled ones carried their grievances to the Tory, 
Colonel John Butler, at Fort Niagara. With a martial 
force, composed partly of Indians, he descended the 
swift flowing Susquehanna in canoes, and before the 
settlers had time to feel alarm the red terror was 
upon them. The vale had shielded a community of 
peaceful New England farmers, whose white church 
spires marked every little hamlet, while the well or- 
dered fields and neat groups of farm buildings told of 
thrift and resultant prosperity. But now murder and 
pillage were the fate of the valley people. The torch 
was set to the white hamlets; the tomahawk and the 
scalping knife were plied, that the authority of King 
George might be reestablished. Three hundred farm- 
ers, hastily mustered, went out to resist the enemy, 
while the women and children were gathered in a 
blockhouse. But the defensive force was swept away 
and nearly all its members slain, for the enemy had 
more than twelve hundred men and his method was 
massacre. The women fled from the blockhouse but 
scores were overtaken, tortured and slain. In one 
dark swampy spot, known ever since as the " Shades 
of Death," a hundred women and children are said 
to have perished of starvation and fatigue. The men 
taken captive were put to the torture. Burning at 
the stake, or being held down with pitchforks upon 
glowing coals were forms of death mercifully swift in 
comparison to being cut to pieces by ingeniously de- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 131 

vised gashes that produced the longest period of agony 
before death brought relief. 

The massacre of Wyoming was long held in the 
memory of Americans. Books, poems, and play3 
were written about it, and its ghastly incidents were 
made more horrible by a wholly needless exaggeration. 
It had much to do with the persistent hatred of Great 
Britain, which existed in the United States even into 
the Twentieth Century, for though the atrocities of the 
valley were typically Indian, the savages were under 
command of Colonel John Butler and constituted less 
than half of his force. 

Another sanguinary figure of that time of Indian 
warfare, a figure perplexing for its contradictory quali- 
ties was Joseph Brant, a pure-blooded Mohawk, whose 
sister was one of the Indian " wives " of the Tory 
leader in the Mohawk Valley, Sir William Johnson. 
In his tribe Brant's name was Thayendanegea. He was 
taught by the braves the use of the ambush, the toma- 
tawk, and the scalplng-knife; while in a Connecticut 
school, which later became Dartmouth College, he 
learned to speak and write English with elegance and 
vigor. He translated the English Book of Common 
Prayer into his native tongue, and became for a time 
an Episcopal missionary among his people; yet on 
occasion his warwhoop rang loudest upon the bloody 
field and his acute mind excelled all others in devising 
cunning expedients for entrapping an adversary to his 
doom. He visited England after the war, associated 
with men of cultivation on an equal plane and on his 
return built the first Episcopal church ever erected in 
Canada; but he nevertheless planned the massacre of 
Cherry Valley, in which a village was wholly destroyed 
by the torch and every one of its fifty inhabitants slain 
or put to the torture without regard to sex. 

These bloody successes of the Indians and Tories 



132 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

had been won against unorganized farmers, but their 
sufferings and blood cried loud for vengeance and 
Washington detached five hundred men from his army 
in 1779, and sent them to lay waste the country of the 
Iroquois, and to destroy the nest of the Tories at 
Fort Niagara. 

In two columns the army advanced up the valleys 
of the Susquehanna and Mohawk rivers, meeting at 
Tioga, New York. On the site of Elmira, they admin- 
istered a crushing defeat to the Tories and Indians, 
which they followed up by wholly devastating the 
country of the Iroquois. That tribe had advanced 
beyond the merely nomadic state and had become til- 
lers of the soil and builders of villages. All their 
evidences of progress were swept away, more than 
forty villages burned and their fields laid waste. A 
bitter winter following so completed the ruin of the 
tribes that made up the famous League of the Iro- 
quois that they never recovered. Yet they were not 
annihilated and for two years the Mohawk Valley 
was the scene of Indian raids, so ruthless and san- 
guinary, that the farmer's grasp turned naturally from 
the plow to the rifle, while the bay of a hound or the 
distant lowing of cattle smote like a warwhoop on 
ears, ever tense for sounds of alarm. 

South of the Ohio River, the settlers in Kentucky 
had for years suffered cruelly from continuous Indian 
warfare, for which, to some extent, their own aggres- 
sions were to blame. The wanton murder of the 
family of Logan, a high-minded and friendly Indian 
chief, had added fuel to the flames of strife that gave 
to Kentucky the sinister appellation, " the dark and 
bloody ground." Though the British commandant 
at Detroit — " Hair-buying Hamilton " he was called, 
because of his bloody trafl'ic with the Indians — had 
been chiefly active in fomenting the war in New York 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 133 

and Pennsylvania, he had nevertheless done enough in 
Kentucky to awaken the resentment of the sturdy peo- 
ple of that state, one of whom determined upon 
reprisals. 

At that time Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan were 
a true international frontier. All were claimed and 
held by the British or by the revolting Colonists, but 
the population was largely French, while beyond the 
Mississippi lay Spanish territory with a Spanish com- 
mandant at St. Louis. At Kaskaskia, a now vanished 
village of Illinois, once its capital, was the seat of 
British power, maintained by a small garrison. Most 
of the inhabitants of the place were French. At Vin- 
cennes, now in the state of Indiana, was another Brit- 
ish garrison, surrounded by a population of Frenchmen. 

A young land surveyor, George Rogers Clark, fol- 
lowing his calling in the settlements along the Ohio 
River, learned that the garrisons at Kaskaskia and 
Vincennes had been much reduced by sending their 
troops to Detroit. When he heard of the surrender 
of Burgoyne, he suddenly conceived the idea of taking 
all • this territory out of British control. Without 
awaiting authority he sent spies throughout the land, 
and armed with their reports, collected a force of 
about two hundred men with some light artillery, at 
Pittsburgh. No one but Clark himself knew his 
purpose. In May, of 1778, his little expedition rowed 
down the Ohio to its mouth, a distance of a thousand 
miles. Through forests and across prairies he led 
his men swiftly, until he came within three miles of 
the town. There he learned that the garrison had no 
suspicion of any impending danger. At nightfall he 
divided his little force into two divisons and slipped 
quietly up to the fort. So careless was the watch that 
Clark, preceding his men, walked through the postern 
gate and into the stockade. From a brightly lighted 



134 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

building came the merry sound of fiddles and the 
shuffling of dancing feet. Quietly Clark crept to 
the door, opened it and stood within, his arms folded, 
silent, solitary. No one for a moment noticed the 
strange figure in buckskins and the dance went gaily on. 
Then an Indian, suddenly sensing the presence of a 
stranger, leaped to his feet with a warwhoop, and all 
turned in alarm. Before any could strike Clark told 
them that his men — whose triumphant shouts could be 
heard — had captured the fort without bloodshed and 
that the dance might just as well go on. The military 
officers were at once seized but the people, who were 
more French than English, accepted the sudden change 
in sovereignty with indifference or perhaps satisfaction. 
Cahokia and Vincennes also surrendered to his mes- 
sengers, though he had no troops with which to 
garrison either place. 

Hamilton heard the news at Detroit with natural 
resentment. Sending out men first to stir up the In- 
dians, he marched on Vincennes with five hundred 
English, French, and Indians. There was an Ameri- 
can commandant there but no garrison, hence 'the 
town was taken without trouble — its French inhabi- 
tants caring little which flag flew since their own could 
not. Happily the ease of his first conquest did not 
spur Hamilton on to proceeding against Clark at Kas- 
kaskia. The way was long, the winter coming on 
apace. Accordingly, he sent most of his men back 
to Detroit, and settled down to winter in Vincennes. 
This comfortable project, however, was interrupted 
by Clark who, when he found that Hamilton would 
not attack him, determined to do the attacking himself. 
With 1 80 men he made one of the most thrill- 
ing marches in the history of war — a march on 
which Stonewall Jackson himself might have looked 
with admiration and envy. It was 240 miles from 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 135 

Kaskaskia to VIn'cennes. The time was February, 
and the country lay deep under the snows of winter. 
But the cold and the snow were better than what fol- 
lowed. For after a week of not uncomfortable 
progress through the wilderness, with plenty of game 
and roaring campfires at night, a sudden thaw set in. 
The rivers of that region were then as they are now, 
subject to sudden rises, and when they came to the 
Wabash, which they had thought to cross upon the 
ice, they found that, with its branches it was now a 
rushing river five miles wide. With notable foresight 
Clark had brought boats along and in three days had 
his entire force ferried across. But presently, there- 
after, they came upon land so flooded as to require 
wading, but not deeply enough to permit the use of 
the canoes. Cakes of ice floated on the turbid stream, 
and the air above froze stiff the sodden clothing of 
the men when they had reached dry land. Through 
four miles of this sort of travelling the men marched 
doggedly, Clark at their head singing, shouting the 
warwhoop, and employing every device to encourage 
them to press on. Lest encouragement should not 
sufl5ce, twenty-five were told off as a rear guard with 
orders to shoot any who strove to turn back. This 
duty was not, however, required of them. 

Notwithstanding its difficulties, the march had been 
made so expeditiously and secretly that Vincennes 
might have been surprised as Kaskaskia had been. 
But Clark learned from a hunter, whom he had cap- 
tured, that two hundred Indians had just arrived in 
the town, which gave Hamilton a marked advantage 
in point of numbers. He reckoned that the popula- 
tion of the town being mostly French would, if attacked 
without warning, make common cause with the British 
and Indians and fight for the defence of their homes; 
while if a summons to surrender were presented they 



136 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

would remain neutral. Accordingly, the summons 
was sent, and while awaiting an answer a scalp-hunt- 
ing party of Indians, sent out by Hamilton, blundered 
into the American camp and were all killed, not as 
hostile soldiers, but as savages and murderers. A day 
later Hamilton with his force surrendered. The 
power of the British in that section was permanently 
shattered, and the chief scalp-hunter had no longer 
an opportunity to press his peculiar calling. 

Few men have done more to permanently affect the 
course of our national development, and few have won 
smaller fame by their patriotic efforts than George 
Rogers Clark. As a civilian he planned and executed 
the campaign which held for the Americans the coun- 
try north of the Ohio River, and having done his deed, 
returned to civil life and virtual obscurity. 

Southern writers and students of history have often 
complained that the histories of the Revolution have 
usually given but scant attention to the military opera- 
tions and the battles in the Southern colonies. They 
have been accustomed to ascribe this neglect to the 
fact that the historians have been in the main Northern 
men — New Englanders, indeed, in great numbers — 
and impute to them an inclination to underestimate the 
part of the South in the War for Independence. But 
the fact is rather that the operations in the Southern 
colonies were at no time — except in the final campaign 
which culminated with Yorktown and victory — con- 
ducted in accordance with any definite plan of 
campaign on the part of either the British or the Colo- 
nials. The operations south of the Potomac were at 
no time so dramatic, or so full of importance to the 
cause of liberty as Washington's prolonged struggle 
against British conquest in the North. 

Charleston, South Carolina, before the Declaration 




U S 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 137 

of Independence, that is, in June, 1776, had beaten off 
a British naval attack, under Admiral Parker, and an 
assault of more than three thousand British regulars 
under General Clinton. Every American school-boy 
knows the story of Fort Moultrie — how it was built 
of palmetto logs at which the engineers scoffed but 
which, by their soft and spongy texture, stopped the 
cannon balls without splitting. And the figure of Ser- 
geant Jasper, springing to the rampart, seizing the 
flag which had been shot away and waving it from his 
sponge-staff, is one of the classics of American history. 
After this triumph the Southern colonies had been left 
in peace until the autumn of 1778, when British troops, 
making their base in the Spanish territory of Florida, 
began desultory raids into Georgia. Plantation homes 
were burned, fields laid waste, and slaves carried off to 
be sold anew into slavery for the profit of their cap- 
tors. Savannah was captured after a brief defence, 
and with that city as a base, the British set about the 
subjection of Georgia and South Carolina. The Brit- 
ish Ministry planned to conduct the war in this territory 
as they were prosecuting it in the Northwest — with the 
aid of Tories and Indians, and by the savage methods 
of raids and massacres, rather than by campaigns of 
organized and disciplined troops. They had not 
heard of the complete overthrow of their scalp-hunting 
Colonel Hamilton at Vincennes, nor of the vigorous 
fashion in which Washington had avenged the victims 
of the Wyoming massacre. Accordingly, they planned 
for the South all the barbarities they had committed 
in the Northwest. 

The outlook there for the Patriot cause was not 
promising. Georgia was but sparsely populated — in 
many ways the weakest of the colonies. South Caro- 
lina was full of Tories, and her slaves were in a chronic 
State of discontent, which kept the small and ill- 



138 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ordered militia fully engaged in putting down incipient 
servile revolts. Fighting began early between the Con- 
tinentals and the Loyalists. A party of seven hundred 
Loyalists from North Carolina, marching to join the 
British at Savannah, were encountered by a smaller 
body of Patriots under Colonel Andrew Pickens, and 
put to flight. About half their number were captured 
and were straightway put on trial for their lives, on a 
charge of treason. Five were found guilty and 
hanged. This action, in view of the tone of the Brit- 
ish proclamations outlawing all Patriots taken in arms, 
was perhaps legitimate, but nevertheless unwise and 
barbarous. Naturally, it led to immediate reprisals. 
The British commander at Augusta, one Colonel 
Thomas Browne, had in his possession some Patriot 
prisoners, of whom he at once hanged several. Thus 
he not only avenged the deaths of the North Caro- 
linians, but gratified a personal rancor, for at the 
outbreak of hostilities the Colonists had applied to him 
a coat of tar and feathers, the recollection of which 
long rankled within his breast. From that time on, 
however, the neighborhood war in the South was sav- 
age and cruel. 

At the close of 1778, General Lincoln, who had been 
distinguished in the Saratoga campaign, was sent to 
take command of the Patriot armies in the South. 
With him appears first that name so venerable in our 
national annals. Establishing himself in Charleston, 
he gathered a considerable force and set about driv- 
ing the British out of Georgia. General Prevost, his 
antagonist, was quite his match in military skill and 
energy. When Lincoln, leaving Moultrie with about 
one thousand men to guard Charleston, set out on a 
campaign against the British at Augusta, General Pre- 
vost let him get fairly out of the wav, and then with 
three thousand men marched out of Savannah and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 139 

turned his steps toward Charleston. There was no- 
body to offer any effective resistance. In the most 
leisurely fashion, and with practically no losses, the 
British column swept along through a rich and thickly 
settled region. Plantations were ravaged and laid waste ; 
mansions were sacked and burned, silver plate and 
movable valuables were carried off by the cart-load, 
and all else cut to pieces or otherwise ruined. So 
savage and wanton was the British conduct that trees 
were girdled and cattle and horses that could not be 
taken away were killed. A band of Cherokees formed 
part of the expeditionary' force and the tomahawk 
and scalping-knife were employed on the helpless of 
every age and both sexes. More than one thousand 
slaves are believed to have perished from starvation 
or violence. 

Reaching Charleston about the middle of May, Pre- 
vost sent in a summons to surrender. The defenders 
were at the moment torn by internal dissensions. Col- 
onel Moultrie, in command, was a brave and devoted 
officer, but he had subject to him a force wholly inade- 
quate to oppose the British, while little reliance could 
be placed upon the inhabitants or the civil authorities, 
because of a new problem which at that most unfortu- 
nate moment had been sprung upon them. For long 
years the South Carolinians had lived in some dread 
of their slaves. The friendly, almost affectionate rela- 
tions, which subsisted between the Virginians and their 
blacks had for some reason never obtained in the Pal- 
metto state. There the slaves were held subject with 
an iron hand, never cloaked with the velvet glove. 
Indeed the militia of the colony was so constantly en 
gaged in guarding against an African uprising, that 
South Carolina had been able to contribute but little 
to the Continental army that fought under Washing- 
ton. Henry Laurens, one of the most distinguished 



I40 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

citizens of that state, had nevertheless urged the bold 
plan of selecting a number of brave, stalwart, and 
trustworthy negroes, and enrolling them in the army, 
under white officers. His son, who was an officer on 
Washington's staff, urged the project upon the com- 
mander-in-chief, who sternly discouraged it. Hamil- 
ton, however, warmly approved it, and in the end, 
Congress recommended it to the consideration of the 
people of South Carolina. The younger Laurens, 
bearing this message from Congress, arrived in Charles- 
ton almost simultaneously with Prevost's peremptory 
summons to surrender. 

The people of the city were in a rage. They had 
been hoping for aid from Congress and received in- 
stead advice to arm the slaves, whom, for a century, 
they had systematically stripped of every knife, pistol, 
or gun that could be found. They wondered whether 
their greater foe was the British thundering at their 
gates or the theorists sitting at Philadelphia. The 
South Carolinians, then as in 1861, or indeed to-day, 
were bitterly intolerant of any effort of Congress to 
solve their eternal question of the relation between the 
races. Some in a rage were for surrendering to the 
British. The utmost that Moultrie could coax them into 
doing was to send a flag of truce to Prevost, suggesting 
that South Carolina would remain wholly neutral until 
the end of the war, and then decide her course by ballot 
and by treaty. The British general contemptuously 
refused even to listen to the representations of civil- 
ians, but curtly announced to Moultrie, as military 
commandant, that he would consider no terms but 
unconditional surrender. 

Moultrie's fighting blood was afire in an instant, 
and he prepared for defence. Unknown to him, how- 
ever, fate was shaping events to his advantage. 
Lincoln had heard of Prevost's movement and, aban- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 141 

doning his advance on Augusta, returned hastily and 
the British suddenly abandoned the siege and returned 
to Savannah, But with all the marching and counter- 
marching, the enemy was left in undisturbed possession 
of Georgia. 

That possession was destined to be menaced in a 
most unexpected way. D'Estaing, it will be remem- 
bered, left Boston after an exceedingly unpleasant visit 
there and took his fleet to the West Indies to harry the 
British possessions and commerce there. After some 
successes he sailed northward again, swooped down on 
a British fleet, hovering off the mouth of the Savannah 
River, and captured four ships. Elated with this suc- 
cess he thought of capturing Savannah, and wrote to 
the government of South Carolina, asking for coopera- 
tion. In September, 1779, the French troops from 
the fleet, in cooperation with Lincoln's forces, began 
a systematic siege of the city, which was stubbornly 
defended by Prevost who, throughout the war in the 
South, showed himself a gallant and a resourceful 
soldier, though his name was tarnished by the atroci- 
ties committed by his soldiers. Wearying of the 
slow progress of the siege, and fearing lest the autum- 
nal storms might work havoc upon his fleet in the 
insuflScient anchorage at the mouth of the Savannah, 
D'Estaing persuaded Lincoln to join in an effort to 
carry the town by assault. The attack, made on the 
9th of October, failed utterly, though it was delivered 
with the utmost gallantry. Though the lilies of 
France and the stars and stripes of the Americans 
were planted upon the redoubt, the assailants were 
unable to maintain their lodgment. D'Estaing was 
twice wounded. The Count Pulaski, one of the most 
gallant of the young noblemen who had crossed the 
ocean to serve the cause of liberty, was slain. Six 
hundred of the French and two hundred Americans 



142 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

were lost. The British loss was slight and when the 
battle was ended, their hold upon Savannah had not 
been shaken. A few days later D'Estaing sailed 
away, never to appear again in the war. Both of his 
efforts at cooperation with the American forces had 
ended in disaster. 

Georgia was now merely a conquered province and 
was so treated by the conquerors. Every planter sus- 
pected of favoring the Revolution suffered. Pillage 
and murder were common. Slaves were seized and 
sold — seized and sold again. Secure in Georgia, the 
British determined to subdue South Carolina ,next. 
The first step was to take Charleston, then held by 
Lincoln with but two thousand men. Clinton, by 
abandoning Rhode Island, which had ceased to be of 
importance, was able to take 8,500 men to sea on 
Arbuthnot's fleet, and on reaching Tybee Island, at 
the mouth of Charleston harbor, he was joined by 
Prevost, who raised his force to ten thousand. On 
looking the field over, he sent back to New York for 
three thousand more men. Lincoln had in all but 
three thousand men, and it would have been well had 
he abandoned the city. Charleston is a veritable trap 
for an occupying army, and into that trap Lincoln 
gathered all the troops he could secure, while the 
British fleet ran past Fort Moultrie into the harbor, 
and the British troops threw up works on every side 
and blocked every possible pathway of escape. To 
sustain an assault would be mere wanton waste of 
life, and on May 12, Lincoln surrendered. Three 
thousand men were lost to the Continental army, and 
South Carolina joined Georgia in the list of subjugated 
colonies. " We look on America as at our feet," said 
Horace Walpole. 

Perhaps the two colonies might have lain thus prone 
until the end of the war, had the policy of the con- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 143 

querors been one of pacification. But instead, the 
victors applied the lash until the victims, in very de- 
spair, revolted. Expeditions were sent in every 
direction to put down any armed opposition and to 
suppress any signs of resentment. The people were 
offered the choice between taking the oath of alle- 
giance, or being treated as rebels and subjected to the 
severest penalties of the law. Those who chose the 
latter suffered confiscation, ruin and death. No neu- 
trality was recognized, and very quickly the South 
Carolinian who could not reconcile it with his con- 
science to fight for the King, recognized that unless he 
wanted to die he must fight against that monarch. 
Accordingly, the country-side was soon in arms and a 
guerrilla warfare begun, of which the British by no 
means got the best. 

•This spluttering warfare of hasty raids and swift 
retreats, of lurking places in dense forests and rocky 
dens bred some hardy and dashing characters, who 
were long heroes to American boys. Chief of these 
was Marion, the " Swamp Fox," of whom Bryant 
wrote : 

" The British soldier trembles , 

When Marion's name is told." 

When the poet's collected works came to be repub- 
lished in England, however, a prudent publisher edited 
the line to read, " The foeman trembles in his lair," 
which serves to show that while war may ennoble 
the muse, peace and the prospect of profits humbles 
her. 

Francis Marion was of French Huguenot descent. 
He had served in the French and Indian war, and 
plunged into the Revolution in its very first days. A 
planter and a man of substance, he threw all aside to 
serve his country. In a war, characterized by wanton 



144 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

cruelty and even savagery on both sides, he restrained 
his men from the commission of excesses. " Never 
shall a house be burned by one of my people," he 
said. ** To distress poor women and children is what 
I detest." This was his attitude during a campaign, 
the cruelties of which led Lord Cornwallis, a man of 
restrained speech and just temperament, to speak of 
" the shocking tortures and inhuman murders which 
are every day committed by the enemy." The Brit- 
ish general was careful to confine his reference to the 
misdeeds of the Americans. He made no reference to 
Colonel Tarleton's massacre of prisoners at Waxhaw. 
Nor did he comment on the British practice of destroy- 
ing the property of all who were associated with the 
Patriot cause. Sometimes — generally, in fact — this 
practice did the British cause more harm than good, 
as in the instance of Thomas Sumter, who saw his wife 
and children turned out into the cold, and his roof-tree 
ablaze, while British troops plundered his house. Sum- 
ter became like Marion, a partisan ranger. With 
small bodies of followers, numbering at times from 
twenty to seventy, these men would dash here and 
there, sweeping away British outposts, cutting British 
columns in twain and harassing the enemy at every 
point in every way. They were ill-armed. Marion 
took saws from the country saw mills and had them 
beaten into swords, while pewter bowls and spoons 
were melted up to make bullets. They were ill-disci- 
plined, for any who tired of warfare would quit the 
ranks for a stay at home, rejoining when they craved 
excitement anew. But they were admirably led by 
leaders who knew no fear, and threaded the country 
roads and mountain paths with the assured certainty 
of long acquaintance. They lived on the country, 
needing neither tents nor baggage trains. And they 
kept alive the spirit of revolution at a time when Corn- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 145 

wallis wrote, " But for Sumter and Marion, South 
Carolina would be at peace." 

Washington, however, had no intention of leaving 
the South to the zeal of the partisan leaders alone, and 
in June dispatched Baron De Kalb with a force of 
about two thousand men southward. As he pro- 
ceeded, his force was increasing gradually. Sumter 
and Marion both joined him. But before the South 
Carolina line was reached. Congress sent down to com- 
mand the army General Gates, who had enjoyed the 
glory of receiving the sword of Burgoyne, though he 
bore little part in the events that compelled that gen- 
eral's surrender. Washington had wished to give the 
command of the southern army to Greene, whom he 
esteemed his ablest general — an estimate which history 
has thoroughly confirmed. But Congress, with which 
body Gates had always been popular, he being one 
of those political generals common in our later wars, 
insisted that the beneficiary, if not the hero, of Sara- 
toga, should be given the command. Though living 
in retirement on his Virginia estate, he responded with 
alacrity, took command of the army at Hillsborough, 
North Carolina, on the 19th of July, and within thirty 
days had led it to the most needless, disastrous and 
ignominious defeat sustained by any American troops 
during the Revolution. When he set out to take his 
command, his friend, Charles Lee, sulking in compul- 
sory retirement, wrote him, " Take care that your 
Northern laurels do not change into Southern willows," 
and the dismal prophecy was most thoroughly fulfilled. 

The defeat of Gates was the culmination of a series 
of errors of judgment, and the inevitable result of an 
indifference to ordinary military precautions. He 
found his army ill-disciplined, short of arms, ammuni- 
tion, tents, and all the munitions of war. The enemy 
was not menacing and all the conditions demanded that 



146 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the army should be refitted and drilled before under- 
taking any offensive movement. Instead Gates or- 
dered an immediate advance. The enemy was at 
Camden. To defeat him there would be to force him 
back to Charleston, leaving the Americans in control 
of all other parts of South Carolina. The point of 
attack was well chosen; the tactics not so good. Two 
roads led to Camden. One was i6o miles long, 
through a country thickly populated with friendly 
Whigs, where the advancing column would be sure to 
find ample provisions. The other was fifty miles 
shorter, but through a barren and hostile country. 
Gates chose the latter. He saved three days of 
marching, but wasted two on arriving in the enemy's 
front through indecision as to his plan of attack. 
His men arrived weak and ailing from insufficient food, 
but their sufferings would have been repaid had ad- 
vantage been taken of the time saved, and an 
immediate attack made upon the enemy, who was then 
outnumbered, and ill-prepared for an attack. But 
Gates hesitated, until Cornwallis arrived with reen- 
forcements of British regulars. It appears that the 
American general knew accurately neither his own 
strength nor that of his enemy, for he was confidently 
counting on seven thousand men under his own com- 
mand and was mightily surprised to learn that he had 
but a few more than three thousand. The news de- 
rived from prisoners that Cornwallis had as many, 
mostly regulars, seemed to greatly astonish the Ameri- 
can general. Even at that he let Sumter weaken the 
army by going with eight hundred men to capture the 
British wagon train — an enterprise which was success- 
fully conducted but was barren of results because of the 
defeat of the main American army. 

Battle was brought on on the morning of the 15th of 
August by the simultaneous determination of Corn- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 147 

wallis and Gates to surprise each other. Stealthily 
creeping forward, the hostile armies blundered into 
contact, and the woods and fields were at once 
ablaze with musketry. At the very first onset the 
raw militia from Virginia and North Carolina threw 
down their arms and fled. Cornwallis flung against 
them his most seasoned regulars, but in so doing 
weakened that part of his line that faced the veterans 
from Washington's army, led by the gigantic De Kalb. 
Here the fortune of war so favored the Americans 
that De Kalb ordered a charge and was sweeping all 
before him, when the flight of the American militia 
left the whole British army, save Tarleton's cavalry, 
which was pursuing the fugitives, free to concentrate 
upon him. Born down by sheer weight of numbers, 
the regulars were beaten, but not routed. De Kalb, 
fighting on foot, fell dying with eleven wounds. His 
men made an orderly retreat, but the militia that had 
made up the left wing, fled in disorder and were cut 
down by scores by Tarleton's horsemen. Gates was 
caught in the torrent of fugitives and seems to have 
made little effort to resist it. At any rate, by chang- 
ing horses, he beat all his followers to Hillsborough, 
making the two hundred miles in a headlong flight of 
four days. His laurels had indeed turned to willows. 
In this engagement, the American loss is estimated 
at one thousand killed and wounded, with as many 
more taken prisoners. Seven pieces of artillery and 
two thousand muskets were lost. But the British did 
not win the day without loss. De Kalb's seasoned 
troops put up a stubborn resistance and, though they 
lost eight hundred men in the fight, inflicted a loss of 
about half as many upon the enemy. Few and badly 
organized as were the Continental troops of that day 
— the progenitors of the regular army of to-day — 
they never failed to give a good account of themselves 



148 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

in battle and challenged in war the admiration of the 
people, only to find in peace that the immemorial 
English dread of a standing army was too strongly 
implanted in the minds of the people to be eradicated 
by deeds of valor on the battle field. 

It so happened, however, that the first sharp check 
administered to the British, now that their power 
seemed unshakable in Georgia and the Carolinas, 
came not from the regular forces but from a body of 
mountaineers, men who had taken no part in the Revo- 
lution thus far, but who, finding their homes and their 
liberties menaced, girded up their buckskins, seized 
their rifles, and descending from their hillside fast- 
nesses, dealt Cornwallis a staggering blow. This 
done, they retired again to figure no more In the war. 

Across the northwestern end of both of the Caro- 
linas extends a rugged range of mountains in which, 
since the earliest days of the white settlement of 
America, there has lived a race of sturdy, independent 
mountaineers, somewhat heedless of what is going on 
in other parts of the land, but tenacious of their own 
rights, and ready to defend them by their own valor 
without appeal to law. These qualities persist In the 
people of the Blue Ridge to-day. They were apparent 
in the revolutionary days. For while the mountaineers 
took little interest in that struggle so long as it took 
only the form of a contest over sovereignty, they 
blazed in fierce wrath when Patrick Ferguson, a cav- 
alry leader, whom Cornwallis had commissioned to 
uproot and eradicate patriotic sentiment in the Caro- 
linas, sent word up into their mountain fastnesses that 
he would extend his raids thither and destroy their 
villages if they sent aid to the Colonists fighting for 
self-government along the sea coast. The men to 
whom this message was sent were not accustomed to 
take orders or to listen to threats. They were pio- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 149 

neers of the Boone, Logan, and Clark type, who 
swung the axe and held the plow when possible, but 
were ready enough to turn from them to the rifle, as 
need arose. They had sustained the shock, of Indian 
raids, and had wrested their lands from a foe more 
cunning and quite as brave as Ferguson's raiders, and 
they were in no mood to endure menace or receive 
commands from any source. There is an old adage 
about the wisdom of letting sleeping dogs lie and it 
would have been well for Ferguson had he observed it. 
In the mountains two men were all-powerful, be- 
cause of their capacity for initiative, their popularity 
and their knowledge of the art of frontier war. Isaac 
Shelby heard first the news of Ferguson's threats and 
rode through the passes to consult John Sevier. At 
the latter's place he found a festival in progress with 
the three frontier amusements — a barbecue, a horse 
race and hard drinking — going on. In the midst of 
the festivities, the mountaineers listened 'to Shelby's 
story and agreed that after a reasonable time for 
the completion of their spree, they would join in driv- 
ing Ferguson away from their threshold. Word was 
also sent to people in the nearby Virginia mountains, 
and soon there gathered at a fixed rendezvous about 
twelve hundred men from the three colonies. It was 
a unique fighting force. Clad in buckskin with fringed 
leggings and tasselled caps, carrying long rifles and 
keen hunting knives, taciturn of speech and swift with 
a shot or a knife-thrust, they were fighting men from 
youth. There were no commissary wagons, no tents, 
no arrangements for supplies. Every man foraged for 
himself. There were no bayonets, cannon, nor even 
swords for the oflicers. As a matter of fact, there 
were not in the true military sense any officers at all, 
though the personal ascendancy of Shelby, Sevier, and 
Campbell, who led the Virginians, vested them with 



ISO STORY OF OUR ARMY 

a certain leadership. In the end Campbell was elected 
chief commander, but at the same time Shelby made a 
speech to the men in which he assured them that each 
man was to be his own officer, fight on his own account, 
but never leave the field. When the British were 
come up with, they were to be " given Indian play." 
Thus instructed, the mountaineers set out upon the 
warpath, their numbers increasing by volunteers as 
they made their way along, following the enemy like 
the hound the scent, and steadfastly refusing to be 
drawn from the trail by tempting rumors of smaller 
bands that might be tracked down and easily destroyed. 

Ferguson was by no means asleep, nor did he under- 
estimate the character of the force so tirelessly tracking 
him through the sparsely settled country. That he 
could -not rejoin Cornwallis without a battle he knew 
well, but he continued his retreat in the direction of 
his chief, watching meanwhile for a spot where he 
could most'effectively sustain the expected assault. The 
mountaineers, for their part, seeing in his retreat only 
a confession of panic, pursued the more swiftly, split- 
ting their force in twain, and sending forward 750 
picked men, mounted on the best horses that they 
might the more quickly overtake the fleeing quarry. 

On a rocky ridge of King's Mountain in South Caro- 
lina, near its northern boundary, Ferguson halted his 
men and made ready to fight. He had with him about 
1,200 men, of whom about 200 were British regulars, 
the remainder Tories, who had flocked to his standard. 
As he looked upon them massed on the crest of a pre- 
cipitous and rocky hill he felt himself impregnable 
and cried aloud to his men, " Well, boys, here is a 
place from which all the rebels outside of hell cannot 
drive us." 

To a certain extent Ferguson spoke truly. Not one 
of his men left that place except as a prisoner. For 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 151 

the men of the mountains — " dirty mongrels," Fergu- 
son called them though in their veins flowed the blood 
of the Scottish Covenanters and French Huguenots — 
closed in on every side of the ridge and undeterred by 
its steep and rugged sides, advanced relentlessly upon 
the foe. Here came into action that " Indian play," 
which Shelby had advised. Crouching behind trees 
and boulders to load and to fire, the frontiersmen 
would run warily from shelter to shelter, ever ad- 
vancing a little upon Ferguson's line. That com- 
mander, brave and alert, called his men into action with 
blasts upon a silver whistle, and when the assailants 
were near enough flung his whole line upon them in a 
mad charge. Unused to the bayonet, the frontiersmen 
gave way, and thinking them routed, the Tories 
turned with cheers to their position on the crest of the 
hill only to find another line of silent, swift figures 
slipping up the other side, spitting deadly rifle bullets 
from behind logs and boulders and always mounting 
higher. Again the shrill blasts of the whistle, and 
once more the fierce charge. The assailants vanished 
and the defenders, wearied with their rush returned to 
their stronghold only to find the other side of the hill 
once more alive with the pertinacious foe. So for 
hours the conflict raged, silently on the part of the 
Americans who needed no officers to shout commands 
and who let their rifles speak for them. At last a 
bullet found Ferguson's heart and he fell dead from 
his white horse. At the moment the assailants were 
mounting each side of the hill simultaneously, and 
perplexed by the problem of defence offered, and 
shaken by their leader's death, the British raised the 
white flag. They had lost 389 men, killed or 
wounded, and 716 surrendered with 1,600 stand of 
arms. The Americans had lost 20 killed and 60 
wounded. 



152 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

The fight at Kings Mountain was a notable victory 
for the Patriot cause, even though it was not followed 
up. The mountaineers, having slain the man who 
threatened them and destroyed his band, after hanging 
a few of their prisoners, returned to their homes, their 
horses and their barbecues. They were Patriots for 
local reasons only. Nevertheless their victory took 
the snap out of the British campaign in the Carolinas. 
Cornwallis had lost his best partisan leader and only 
a few weeks later his other dashing cavalryman was 
roundly beaten at Bluestock Hill, escaping with his life 
and little else. Marion and Sumter had taken the 
field again with renewed enthusiasm. Patriotic farm- 
ers were flocking to their camps, and the Tory 
settlers were beginning to see that it was not wholly 
safe to aid the British invaders. Before the end of 
the year, British authority in the Carolinas extended a 
rifle shot beyond the principal British camps and no 
farther. 

It seemed, therefore, to Washington a fitting time 
to attack British power in the South. In the North, 
the enemy held New York City and nothing else, but 
his grip on Georgia and the Carolinas was still firm 
and it was evident that Virginia would soon be menaced 
from the South. Thus far American resistance in that 
section had been futile, except in the work of the ir- 
regular forces like those of Sumter and Marion, or 
the men from the mountains. Lincoln had permitted 
himself to be locked up in Charleston and lost his 
whole army. Gates, through carele&sness and stu- 
pidity, had sacrificed his men at Camden. The South 
seemed the burial ground of the military ambitions 
of the Patriot generals. Nevertheless, Greene, at the 
urgency of Washington, took up the desperate cause, 
and Congress, which had had its way with Gates and 
learned its lesson, acquiesced in the selection. Wash- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 153 

ington showed his recognition of the importance of 
the southern campaign at this moment by his selection 
of the commanders to accompany Greene. Among 
them was Daniel Morgan, one of the fighting generals 
whom Congress had passed over with cold indifference. 
At Quebec and at Saratoga, Morgan and Arnold were 
rivals in their dash and courage, but the claims of both 
were ignored. How Arnold resented the ingratitude 
of Congress is one of the tragedies of history. Mor- 
gan, equally ill-treated, resigned his commission and 
retired to his plantation, but after the disaster at 
Camden, he declared that it was no time to nurse a 
grievance, however just, and reported to Gates with- 
out questioning the rank or the service to which he 
was to be assigned. Baron Steuben, the drill-master, 
unapproachable for his skill in making a finished army 
out of raw levies, Kosciusko, the trained engineer, and 
Henry Lee — " Light Horse Harry " — the dashing 
cavalry leader, were there. Another brilliant com- 
mander of horse appeared in Lieutenant-Colonel 
Washington, of Virginia, a cousin of the commander- 
in-chief. 

The southern campaign, planned and executed by the 
leader, not only resulted in a series of victories, but 
ended in the conclusive and final triumph at Yorktown. 
While it was in progress, however, there were occur- 
rences in the North that made the national sky seem 
dark indeed. It was, as we know now, that darkest 
hour that according to the proverb comes just before 
the dawn, but at the time its dark was unillumined by 
any morning star or any faint flush of the approaching 
morn. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Taking of Stony Point and Paulus Hook — The Treason of 
Arnold and the Execution of Andre. 

Meantime in the North the war had fallen away to 
a mere series of British raids, resisted but ineffectively 
by such Patriot forces as could hastily be gathered. 
The British held New York, and Washington held 
them to it, though there was no chance for him to 
attack them successfully so long as he had no fleet and 
they controlled the sea. But every time they ventured 
out from under the guns of the fleet the enemy were 
driven back. Clinton had seized Stony Point, a strong 
position on the east bank of the Hudson below West 
Point, which the Americans held. Although the 
enemy had built strong works there Washington deter- 
mined to recapture the position, partly because it 
menaced his more important post at West Point, partly 
because it afforded a convenient base for the raiding 
parties with which the British were harassing Connecti- 
cut. The adventure was no light one. Stony Point 
was well adapted for heroic defence. On three sides 
it was protected by the waters of the Hudson River. 
On the fourth was a deep morass, crossed by a cause- 
way that might be passed only at low tide. When the 
tide was high the Point was in effect an island. Heavy 
batteries commanded this causeway, and with a gar- 
rison of six hundred men the British might well have 
considered their position impregnable. 

To retake this position Washington called upon Gen- 
eral Anthony Wayne — " Mad Anthony " the soldiers 
called him but loved him In his maddest exploits. The 

154 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 155 

Indians, who had come to know him well and feared 
him much, called him " the black snake," and the 
Indian estimate was the shrewder of the two, for there 
was more of cunning than of madness about him. Yet 
other Indians, recognizing his irresistible force, dubbed 
him " the tornado," and it was in that quality that he 
answered Washington who asked if he could carry 
Stony Point. " I will storm hell if you will plan it," 
responded " Mad Anthony " Wayne. 

Whichever general planned it, the plan was well 
matured and swiftly executed. With 1,200 men 
Wayne took position in the country near Stony Point. 
Every precaution to avoid detection was taken, even 
the dogs for three miles around being mercilessly 
slaughtered lest they betray the presence of strangers, 
and the muskets were kept unloaded for fear of a 
premature discharge. At midnight of the 15th of July 
the attack was delivered. The Americans rushed 
across the causeway, and falling into two columns 
swiftly carried the works in a resistless rush. Wayne 
was struck down by a spent ball, and unable to tell the 
gravity of his hurt, but thinking it perhaps mortal, 
cried to his men to bear him on that he might die 
within the fort. He was thus borne on, but to triumph 
and not to death, for after a very few moments of 
sharp fighting the British surrendered. For a brief 
struggle it was unusually deadly. The Americans lost 
15 killed and 83 wounded, the British 63 killed. In- 
cluding the British wounded, 553 prisoners were taken. 
Washington held the captured works but three days, 
then razing the redoubts he retired to the Highlands 
with the captured garrison, the cannon, and the military 
stores. 

Watching the British ships lying lazily at anchor in 
the North River, and listening to the British bugles 
blowing on Manhattan Island was wearying work for 



156 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the men of the Continental army, but shortly after 
Wayne's dashing exploit at Stony Point another gallant 
adventure stirred the spirits of the Americans. This 
time it was " Light Horse Harry " Lee, who went out 
after laurels and came back plentifully bedecked with 
them. At Paulus Hook, New Jersey, the low-lying 
sand bar on which now stands Jersey City, the British 
had a strong fort, cut off from the mainland by a morass 
and a deep ditch crossed by a single drawbridge. The 
place appeared impregnable. Certainly its defenders 
thought so and in their confident carelessness invited an 
attack. Major Lee, who was posted in the neighbor- 
hood, reported the situation to Washington and was 
authorized to try a surprise. With about three hun- 
dred soldiers Lee started to the attack, but in some 
way the troops became separated and he reached the 
fort with but 150 men, hardly half the number he sup- 
posed the defenders possessed. Nevertheless he deter- 
mined to make the attack, and passing along the lines 
the watchword " Be firm," rushed the drawbridge and 
the redoubt, carrying the fort at a rush and with the 
loss of but two killed and three wounded. It was no 
easy task to retreat with prisoners outnumbering his 
own force, for 159 Britons had been made prisoners. 
But the firing of alarm guns and the roll of drums on 
the ships in the river gave warning that retreat was 
Imperative, so hastily dismantling the fort the victors 
withdrew, reaching the American lines in safety with 
their prisoners. 

These two victories, though without bearing on the 
course of the war, reanimated the drooping spirits of 
the army, and served in part as a corrective to the 
dispiriting tidings from Camden, Savannah, Charles- 
ton, and other scenes of British triumph in the South. 
Yet they could not be followed up, nor indeed were 
they of proportions sufficient for the basis of a cam- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 157 

paign. So long as the British clung to New York 
Washington, without ships, was barred from any of- 
fensive movements. A long dismal winter was fol- 
lowed by an equally uneventful summer. Rocham- 
beau, indeed, with six thousand Frenchmen, arrived 
from France with the fleet of Admiral Ternay — seven 
ships-of-the-line and three frigates. They put in at 
Newport to await a second expedition which was to 
follow them. Unhappily that section never came, but 
was caught at Brest by thirty-two British ships and there 
blockaded until the war was over. Meanwhile Clin- 
ton with a naval force superior to that of Ternay 
blockaded the French in Newport, where they re- 
mained the more contentedly as they knew nothing of 
the state of their fellows at Brest, but daily expected 
the arrival of the second fleet. Accordingly Rocham- 
beau was for the time of no more service than 
D'Estaing had been a year before. 

Into this atmosphere of quiet, of lazy camps, silent 
cannon, and idle drills was suddenly thrown a bomb, 
the explosion of which stirred up the whole country- 
side, struck Washington in one of his tenderest friend- 
ships, roused the wrath of the nation to the fighting 
point, and cost the life of one of the brightest and most 
engaging youths that ever wore the British uniform. 
The story of the treason of Benedict Arnold and the 
death of Major Andre has been so often told that it 
has become commonplace. It is difficult for us to 
comprehend to-day the prodigious effect it had on the 
mind and temper of the people. So high was Arnold's 
state, so close was he to Washington, so vital the point 
in the American line which he proposed to sell to Great 
Britain, that men wondered how much farther the taint 
of treason had spread, and whether the whole revolu- 
tionary movement was not infected. Be sure, too, that 
in that time of sharp dissension between neighbors over 



158 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the merits of the proposition for independence there 
were plenty to spread the spirit of distrust and appre- 
hension, and to counsel abandonment of the whole war 
as a futile uprising, honeycombed with treason and 
doomed to disaster. 

The treason of Arnold is one of the great tragic 
stories of history. It has the dramatic qualities of a 
true tragedy, the pathos of a soul slain even though 
the body escaped. Until the fateful moment of his 
final fall, Arnold stands forth as one of the most en- 
gaging figures of the American Revolution. His 
courage and pertinacity manifested in the expedition 
against Quebec, and again at Saratoga where he was 
seriously wounded, won for him the admiration of 
that class of citizens to whom a soldier who fights is 
an idol. The callous indifference of Congress to his 
just claims for promotion, the stupid indifference with 
which he was set aside while honors and promotions 
were heaped upon semi-traitors like Charles Lee, or 
political generals like Gates, won for him the sym- 
pathy of men who understandingly watched his career, 
while his loyalty to Washington and the readiness with 
which he responded to his chief's every call to service, 
protesting, as he did, against the gross injustice done 
him by Congress, earned for him the esteem of military 
men of every grade. There were times often when 
Benedict Arnold would have been fully justified in 
resigning from the Patriot army on the ground of ill- 
treatment. The long record of studied negligence he 
endured at the hands of Congress might almost have 
justified his going over to the enemy. But when he 
finally took the fatal step he did so in a way that in- 
dicated that dignified resentment, or a fierce and over- 
mastering desire for revenge had less to do with it 
than had a lust for money and for place in the British 
army. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 159 

Much speculation has been wasted upon the question 
of when the idea of betraying his country first seized upon 
Arnold's mind. Some refer it to the period when he 
was put in command at Philadelphia, after Clinton had 
been driven from that city. The pace was high in 
what we are accustomed to call the staid old Pennsyl- 
vania city, and General Arnold's entertainments were 
lavish and costly. He ran into debt, embarked in 
some unwise speculations in a vain attempt to recoup 
himself, and was even accused of financial irregulari- 
ties. The gayest social set in Philadelphia was made 
up of the moderate Tories, people who disapproved 
of carrying the war to the final goal of independence, 
but believed that the concessions offered after the vic- 
tory at Saratoga should have been accepted. In this 
circle Arnold moved, and listened perhaps the more 
willingly to the arguments he heard there, for that he 
had become greatly enamored of one of its chief belles, 
Miss Elizabeth Shippen. His devotion to this lady, 
naturally compelled marked courtesies to her relatives 
and friends, and in time his preference for Tory society 
became so obvious that formal protests were sent to 
Congress and to General Washington. When they 
had been put in the form of definite charges Arnold 
demanded a Congressional investigation — a demand 
which, while compelled by the situation, was none the 
less courageous, since it involved the trial of his case 
by a body long and inveterately hostile to him. Con- 
gress quibbled long with the matter. The committee 
report exonerated him, but Congress instead of follow- 
ing the usual practice and approving the report of its 
committee, wrangled long and finally recommended 
that the whole matter be referred to a court-martial. 
When Washington sought to have the court-martial 
called at once, the council of Pennsylvania asked for 
more time to prepare its case. In the midst of all this 



i6o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

delay, so irritating to a man of Arnold's temperament, 
his marriage to Miss Shippen occurred, and, knowing 
his high temper and keen sensitiveness to personal af- 
fronts, one can but feel that the lady must have had a 
stonmy honeymoon. It has been charged that Mrs. 
Arnold, whose sympathies as a girl were strongly with 
the Tories, incited her husband to his act of treason, 
but this charge has been most conclusively disproved. 
It was, however, just about the period of his marriage 
that he wrote the first letter to Sir Henry Clinton, 
signing an assumed name and describing himself as an 
American officer, aggrieved by the French alliance, 
unjustly treated by Congress and contemplating the 
transfer of his allegiance to the British flag. While 
this correspondence was still in progress Congress re- 
ported on the charges against him, exonerating him 
from all serious blame but directing that he be 
reprimanded by the commander-in-chief for "im- 
prudence." The slur was of the slightest, but to a 
man of Arnold's stamp it was unbearable. From that 
moment, apparently, dates his determination not only 
to go over to the British himself, but to deliver some 
prominent fortress, some considerable command as 
well. 

The most important part of Washington's line of 
defence against British aggressions was the string of 
forts and outposts by which he controlled the Hudson. 
Of these West Point was the strongest, the most truly 
vital one. Arnold in July, 1780, deliberately sought 
command of this fortress from Washington, pleading 
that the wound he had received at Saratoga unfitted 
him for more active service. Washington, who loved 
him, granted the appointment; the more readily per- 
haps since he had just unwillingly discharged the duty 
laid upon him by Congress of reprimanding Arnold 
for his imprudence at Philadelphia. Arnold, his 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS i6i 

mind full of morose broodings over his wrongs, took 
command of the stronghold in the Hudson highlands, 
ready to betray not merely the country whose uniform 
he wore, but the friend who had offered him so great 
a consolation in the moment of his mortification. 

The correspondence with the British had been kept 
up, the letters from the enemy's camp being signed 
John Anderson, and written by that gay and debonair 
young officer, the moving spirit of the Meschianza, 
designer of its costumes and writer of its lyrics. Major 
John Andre. In the course of this correspondence 
references were made and hints dropped that led Sir 
Henry Clinton to suspect that the American officer was 
none other than Benedict Arnold, though the letters 
came signed with the non-committal name " Gustavus." 
So certain was Clinton, however, of the identity of the 
traitor that he embarked troops for an expedition up 
the Hudson, and detained Admiral Rodney, who was 
on his way to the West Indies, to take command of the 
flotilla. 

As matters progressed it seemed necessary to the 
fruition of the project that the two negotiators should 
meet in person. Accordingly " John Anderson " 
wrote from the British headquarters to " Gustavus " 
at West Point, and a meeting was arranged between 
Major Andre and Benedict Arnold. All the accesso- 
ries of melodrama attended the conference, the devel- 
opment of the conspiracy, its failure and its tragic end. 
Major Andre was taken up the river on a British sloop- 
of-war significantly named the " Vulture." A little 
below Stony Point a mysterious boat put off from the 
shore and the young officer was taken from the ship in 
the dead of night, and conveyed to a funereal grove 
of fir trees under whose gloomy shades the arch-con- 
spirator appeared and revealed himself as indeed Gen- 
eral Benedict Arnold, one of the most dashing soldiers 



i62 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of the Patriot line, the commander of Washington's 
most vital stronghold and a traitor of the blackest dye. 
The business in hand permitted of no haste, and the 
night wore away before the two plotters had fully 
matured their plans. When dawn broke the men who 
had brought Andre ashore demurred at pulling back 
to the ship by daylight. It was the time when rival 
gangs of Patriots and Tories, " Cowboys " and " Skin- 
ners " they called themselves, were raiding up and 
down the east bank of the Hudson, and it would go 
ill with boatmen seen to visit a British man-of-war. 
During the remainder of the night and throughout the 
day that followed, the two conspirators mapped out 
their plans. The great chain which spanned the Hud- 
son below West Point, some links of which may still 
be seen at the United States Military Academy, was 
to be cut, and a part removed on the pretext that it 
needed repair. Through the gap thus opened the 
British fleet and transports were to advance upon West 
Point. A heavy bombardment and a land attack were 
sure to be successful, since Arnold agreed to scatter 
his troops so widely that successful defence would be 
impossible. It was even planned that the traitor 
should summon Washington to his aid, concealing the 
British strength so that the commander-in-chief and a 
part of his army might be entrapped. 

As his reward for this Arnold was to receive $30,000 
and a commission as brigadier-general in the British 
army. The price of his treason to his country and 
treachery to his friend was as low as his action was 
base. 

The consultation had been held at the house of a 
farmer named Smith, well within the American lines, 
and while the two officers sat at the breakfast table they 
heard the booming of guns from the river. Much 
alarmed they rushed to the window, and saw the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 163 

American fort on the other side of the river firing upon 
the " Vulture." That vessel being wholly unfit to 
sustain an attack at such short range speedily dropped 
down the river, much to the disquiet of Andre who 
had expected to return to New York by her. Arnold, 
however, reassured him, saying that the vessel would 
doubtless only proceed beyond cannon shot, which in- 
deed proved to be the fact, luckily for Arnold, though 
it had no bearing on the fate of Andre. Shortly after 
this incident Arnold returned in his barge to West 
Point, leaving Andre to the friendly care of the farmer, 
Smith, who was to put him on the ship after nightfall. 
It was recognized, however, that it might be necessary 
to proceed by land to the British lines, and to facilitate 
that Arnold wrote out a couple of passes for Andre 
and Smith. At the solicitation of the former Arnold 
further gave him some papers in his own handwriting, 
including a plan of the West Point works, and a memo- 
randum of the disposition of the troops. These papers 
cost the young officer his life. 

It would seem as if fate moved remorselessly to 
compass the downfall of Major Andre. His own dis- 
obedience of orders contributed much to the fatal end- 
ing of his adventure. In sending him out Sir Henry 
Clinton, who thought highly of him, ordered him ex- 
plicitly not to enter the American lines, not to accept 
any incriminating papers, and above all, not to dis- 
pense with his uniform. All three orders were un- 
heeded. When the boatmen refused to take him back 
to the ship after the midnight conference with Arnold, 
he went to the Smith house within the American lines. 
There he accepted the written pass and other papers 
from Arnold — the latter probably to show his com- 
manding officer, if as he suspected, Arnold was merely 
preparing a trap for him. Finally when he set out 
with Smith to make his way back to the British lines, 



i64 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the farmer, who seems to have been a timid and 
nervous person, persuaded him to doff his army uni- 
form and don citizen's clothing. He became thus a 
spy to the fullest extent of the definition — one travel- 
ling in disguise, within the lines of his enemy and 
carrying incriminating papers. 

If Arnold's friend. Smith, had planned to deliver 
up Andre he could hardly have gone about It more ef- 
fectively. Instead of rowing his guest off to the ship 
in waiting, he begged him to make the journey by 
night to White Plains where was the British outpost. 
Andre, being armed, should have forced him to make 
the trip to the ship, but instead, moved perhaps by 
his companion's fears, agreed to the more perilous 
path. Here again the trepidation of the farmer cost 
the young officer dear. Crossing the river at sundown 
at King's Ferry the two set out to ride through the 
night. But some gossip along the road persuaded 
Smith that the " Cowboys " were abroad and that 
whatever his political beliefs, his purse, horses, and 
perhaps his life were endangered If they caught him 
on the road at night. Andre allowed himself to be 
persuaded by his nervous companion to spend the night 
at a farmhouse, and before dawn they were on the 
road again. But once more Smith failed to perform 
the duty laid upon him by Arnold. He had been 
strictly enjoined to guide Andre all the way to White 
Plains. But having passed the Croton River and 
entered a sort of neutral ground between the British 
and American lines, he begged to be excused from 
further service. Andre, thinking himself near home 
and probably disgusted by the timid fusslness of his 
guide, readily released him and continued his way 
alone. 

He was travelling the Tarrytown road and It hap- 
pened that just then the feud between the Cowboys 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 165 

and Skinners was peculiarly active. Indeed a party of 
the latter guerillas was at the moment seeking for a 
band of Cowboys reported to be in the vicinity. As 
Andre rode along, thinking doubtless of the apparent 
success of his mission and nearing the British lines with 
each pace of his horse, a party of three men sprung 
from the underbrush at the side of the road and com- 
manded him to halt. Andre complied readily enough. 
They had stopped him without any particular reason 
or suspicion, but merely because he was a stranger. 
Had he been silent, or merely blustered about his ar- 
rest they would doubtless have let him pass on — per- 
haps robbing him, for that was part of the patriotic 
activity of these rangers. But the guilty secret Andre 
bore within his bosom made him nervous. Seeing that 
one of his captors wore a Hessian uniform he jumped 
to the conclusion that all must be Cowboys, or parti- 
sans of the British cause, and rashly proclaimed him- 
self a British officer travelling on business of impor- 
tance. Thereupon the man in the Hessian livery 
avowed himself an American and commanded the cap- 
tive to dismount and be searched. Between his stock- 
ings and the soles of his boots were found the papers 
which Arnold had given him. Two of the captors 
could not read, but the third, John Paulding, looking 
over these documents swore mightily, " By God, he is 
a spy," and deaf to all offers of bribes and hush money 
took his captive to an American outpost at North 
Castle, where he was delivered up to Colonel John 
Jameson. Andre, indeed said later, that he was con- 
fident that a rich enough offer would have induced the 
three Patriots to let him go, but it is fair to say that 
John Paulding, thus curiously tossed into fame by fate, 
averred that after he saw the papers ten thousand 
guineas would not have induced him to free the 
prisoner. 



i66 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Fate now began to play a pitiful game of cat and 
mouse with Major Andre. Indeed, throughout his 
tragic story there are so many points at which we see 
he would have escaped if only this or that had hap- 
pened, that it seems fairly the work of malign destiny 
that he ever suffered at all. Colonel Jameson, seems 
to have been a high-minded military gentleman quite 
incapable of suspecting scoundrelism in his command- 
ing officer. For, though he was perplexed by the 
appearance of a British officer travelling toward New 
York, on a pass furnished by General Arnold, with 
plans of the West Point fortifications in his stocking, 
he let no suspicion of his chief cross his mind but sent 
Andre to Arnold for judgment. The papers he sent 
to Washington. 

One almost regrets that the worthy colonel's inten- 
tions were frustrated. There would have been a 
dramatic completeness in the confronting of the un- 
detected traitor by the detected spy that would have 
made it one of the famous meetings of history. 

But again fate intervened. That way Andre might 
have escaped, and destiny had clearly marked him for 
death. With his guard he was well on his way toward 
West Point when Colonel Jameson's second in com- 
mand. Major Benjamin Tallmadge, came into camp 
at North Castle and was told of what had occurred. 
More suspicious than his chief, Major Tallmadge 
urged that Andre be brought back. This Jameson 
did, but allowed the letter warning Arnold to proceed 
on its way. So destiny opened the pathway of escape 
to the arch-traitor while tightening the fetters on the 
lesser criminal. 

Meanwhile the messenger carrying the papers to 
Washington had failed to find him, for that officer was 
making his way to West Point by an unaccustomed 
road. Though Arnold was in command of that 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 167 

fortress his headquarters were at the Robinson house 
on the east bank of the river. Thither came Wash- 
ington with Lafayette, Hamilton, and sev-eral other 
members of his staff. Joking the younger men about 
their being in love with Mrs. Arnold — and indeed the 
winsome Peggy Shippen had become the toast of the 
Patriot army as she once had been of the British — 
Washington and Knox went out to look at some defen- 
sive works while the rest went In to breakfast. The 
meal was gay. Lafayette was ever a charming table 
mate, and the company was at its merriest, totally un- 
conscious that their host's mind was occupied with the 
project of betraying West Point and Its defenders, in- 
cluding in the betrayal Washington himself, If he could 
be lured into the zone over which black treachery was 
brooding. Nor did the guilty host Imagine that the 
mine he had so secretly planted was on the verge of 
explosion and that he, and his hapless ally, would be 
its sole victims. The talk and the meal went gaily 
on until a messenger entered and handed General 
Arnold a sealed note. 

It was a moment to try the soundest nerv^es. The 
self-conscious traitor, facing at his own board the 
commander-in-chief of the army he plotted to betray, 
and his companions in arms whose bitter contempt 
would soon be loosed upon him, held In his hand the 
letter in which Jameson unwittingly warned him that 
all was discovered. What thoughts must have rushed 
through his mind at that moment! How much, may 
he have wondered, did Washington know, for Jame- 
son's note told that the papers found upon Andre had 
been sent to the commander-in-chief. Those present 
at that fateful moment agree that by no pallor, no 
tremor did he give any indication of the shock he had 
sustained, but after finishing the remark which had 
been interrupted by the arrival of the note he excused 



i68 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

himself, saying he had been suddenly called across the 
river to West Point and left the room. Had there 
been a sign of trepidation visible on his face those 
present would scarcely have allowed him to respond to 
this sudden and mysterious call without asking its 
character. Only his wife detected a slight something 
under the mask and anxiously followed him to his 
room. There he told her briefly that he was ruined, 
disgraced, and must flee. With a scream she fainted, 
and lifting her to the bed and stooping to kiss his infant 
son, he made his way to the riverside and was rowed 
in his barge to the " Vulture," which still lay in the 
river waiting for Andre, who was destined never to 
return. 

So quietly had his departure been taken, so complete 
had been his self-control that no suspicion had been 
aroused. About noon General Washington went over 
to West Point. Surprised that no salute greeted the 
coming of the commander-in-chief, they were still more 
perplexed to find Arnold absent from the fort, though 
he had left the breakfast party declaring he was going 
thither. Even then no suspicion entered the mind of any 
of the party. But on returning to the Robinson house 
early In the afternoon they found Hamilton awaiting 
them with a face that told the story of some dire disas- 
ter. Jameson's letter for Washington with Andre's 
papers had come and the aide had read them. 
"Arnold is a traitor and has fled to the British! 
Whom can we trust now?" were the words in which 
Washington announced the .news to Lafayette and 
Knox, 

There was little time for speculation or for regrets. 
Washington quickly found evidences of Arnold's intent 
to so scatter the troops that adequate defence of West 
Point would be Impossible. Countermanding these 
orders, he prepared for an immediate attack, and In- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 169 

indeed, had not Major Andre been captured the British 
would at that very moment have been proceeding up 
the Hudson to the assault. At supper-time a letter 
from Arnold reached Washington. The traitor made 
no plea nor apologies, but simply assured Washington 
that Mrs. Arnold had no share in his treason and 
begged that she might be sent to her parents in Phila- 
delphia or to join him, according to her choice. 

For the unfortunate Andre there was universal pity, 
and no mercy. Perhaps in some wiser, more humane, 
and more sensible age the infliction of a cruel and 
ignominious death sentence upon a youth merely be- 
cause it is customary, though even his judges deplore 
it, will be rightly looked upon as a piece of barbarism. 
No one desired Andre's death. Baron Steuben, one of 
his judges said, " It is impossible to save him. Would 
to God the wretch who has drawn him to his death 
might be made to suffer in his stead." Why it was 
" impossible " the kindly Baron might have found it 
hard to explain. Men wearing the British uniform, 
thinking themselves quite as sternly bound by precedent 
and the laws of war as now did Washington's staff, 
had four years before put to death with like ignominy, 
Nathan Hale, a young American patriot. The bright 
young life then snuffed out did not deter Andre from 
becoming a spy later when his country's service de- 
manded it, nor did the execution of the latter lighten 
the burden of sorrow that the fate of the former had 
caused. A dignified and pathetic statue in the City 
Hall Park of New York commemorates the sacrifice 
of the American spy; a vault in Westminster Abbey 
holds the ashes of the British spy. Honored by 
posterity, beloved by their comrades in arms, and re- 
spected by their foes, these two hapless young men 
were sacrificed to a military superstition which even yet 
persists. 



I70 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Andre was hanged nine days after his capture. He 
made his trial an easy one by telling Washington and 
his judges, with the utmost frankness, all about his ill- 
fated errand, but he made his sentence and execution 
cruelly hard by wining the liking, the affection even, of 
all brought into association with him. Even to the 
very last there were faint possibilities of his escape. 
Always that crucial " if," with which fate so plentifully 
bestrewed the story of his march to the gallows, ap- 
peared at the critical moment to block good fortune. 
If Arnold could be turned over to the Americans, or 
recaptured by them, was the diplomatic suggestion 
made to Clinton, Andre might be permitted to escape. 
But the British general could not be treacherous to the 
traitor he had bought, and so Andre went to the gal- 
lows to expiate another's sin. 

It was a wretched and a pitiful affair throughout. 
Andre's shameful death was scarcely more tragic than 
Arnold's subsequent shameful life. In America the 
traitor's name passed into a synonym for all that is 
base and unworthy. His final infamy was made all 
the deeper and blacker by the height to which he had 
carried his name in the days of his loyal service to his 
nation. *' They would cut off the leg that was 
wounded at Quebec and Saratoga," said a captive 
American captain vvhen Arnold asked what would be 
done to him if taken prisoner, " and bury it with the 
honors of war. The rest of you they would hang on 
a gibbet." In England, however, he was treated with 
general respect, though occasionally some testy Briton 
insulted him with references to traitors. But his sons 
went into the British army, and the family was gradu- 
ally merged into the British ruling classes. His own 
later life was wretched and full of self-reproach. 
Until the last he saved the old buff and blue Conti- 
nental uniform, and the epaulettes and sword-knot 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 171 

which Washington had given him after the victory of 
Saratoga. As death drew nigh he put these on. 
" Let me die," he said, *' in this old uniform in which 
I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever 
putting on any other." 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Battle of the Cowpens — Cornwallis Retires to Virginia — La- 
fayette's Pertinacious Pursuit — Approach of the French Fleet — 
The Surrender at Yorktown — The Continental Army Disbanded. 

War is, after all, the most uncertain of tribunals to 
which nations commit their causes. It would have 
required an inspired seer to foresee at the time of 
Arnold's treason that within a year the issue of the 
Revolution would be settled in behalf of the rebellious 
colonies and settled, not in the North, where thus far 
the bulk of the fighting had been done, but in Virginia 
which, despite its eminence in the leadership of 
the Patriot cause, had seen but little of the actual 
fighting. 

The winter of 1780 indeed brought the two contend- 
ing armies but seldom into actual clash. During the 
fall occurred the battle of King's Mountain, which has 
already been described, and which left the state of af- 
fairs in the South so promising that Greene had been 
appointed general of the armies there operating. 
Greene put Baron Steuben in command in Virginia, 
intrusting him with protecting the state against the 
ravages of Arnold who was already busy in the British 
service, and himself went on to Charlotte, North Caro- 
lina, where he began his preparations for a campaign 
against Cornwallis. That dashing British general, 
though somewhat shaken by Ferguson's defeat at 
King's Mountain, was being strengthened by troops 
sent in haste by Sir Henry Clinton, and commanded 
an army with which Greene was not strong enough to 
cope. But the American general possessed in Sumter, 
Marion, Lee, and Colonel William Washington, 

172 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 173 

cavalry leaders whose dash and audacity were invinci- 
ble. They were to the Patriot army what in later 
years Sheridan was to the Union, and Forrest, Mosby, 
and Fitzhugh Lee to the Confederate forces. They 
hovered about Cornwallis, raiding his outposts, cutting 
his communications, stirring up anew the section of the 
country he thought he had pacified. He had no leader 
able to cope with them, though in Tarleton he pos- 
sessed a cavalry leader of the first rank. Greene had di- 
vided his own army into two bodies, the lesser of which, 
nine hundred strong under General Morgan, he had sent 
to menace Augusta and Ninety-Six — the latter a little 
hamlet near the centre of South Carolina, which long 
since vanished from the map. Cornwallis followed 
suit. With about two thousand men he advanced into 
North Carolina hoping that Greene would follow him 
thither. Tarleton with 1,100 men he sent after Mor- 
gan. Each of the British divisions was numerically 
superior to the American force it confronted, and they 
had the added advantage of being made up of regulars 
while the Patriots were mainly raw militia. 

Morgan was in no wise loath to meet the champion 
sent to overthrow him. Retreating just long enough 
to choose his ground, he finally took position at a 
clearing not far from King's Mountain, known as the 
Cowpens. Here he posted his men in a battle array 
which the conventional tactician would look upon as 
fatal. The first daring strategist who burned his 
bridges behind him had none the better in audacity of 
Morgan. Behind his line of battle was a broad river 
with no means of passage, but when he was told that 
in case of disaster he had reserved no possibility of 
retreat he responded that this was just what he wanted. 
His militia would see it was impossible to run away 
and would therefore stop and fight. It was better, he 
contended, than the usual custom of stationing a line 



174 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of regulars to shoot down fugitives. When he came 
to post his men he put the Carolina and Georgia militia 
in front, telling them very frankly that he expected 
them to be frightened by the novel experience of sus- 
taining a charge, but exhorting them not to run away 
without delivering at least two effective volleys, and 
when they did run, not to charge back through the 
lines behind them, but to run around the flanks and to 
the rear, thus assuring their own safety without throw- 
ing the whole army into confusion. Back of the mili- 
tia he placed the Continentals — seasoned troops from 
Virginia and Maryland — and back of these were 
Colonel Washington's squadrons of cavalry. 

The British came on gallantly. They had marched 
all night over muddy roads and through swollen creeks, 
but dashed into the attack scarcely waiting to form 
their ranks. It was Tarleton's characteristic way of 
rushing to the attack, but it did not work well this 
time. The American militia, piqued perhaps by Mor- 
gan's calm assumption of their timidity, fired not two, 
but many rounds at close range and when they did give 
way, retired in good order around the flanks of the 
supporting Continentals. The British pressing on, 
their ardor aroused by the flight of what they supposed 
to be Morgan's main army, found themselves con- 
fronted by a perfectly fresh body of veteran Continen- 
tals. These they engaged with gallantry, and owing 
to a mistaken command were about to crumple up the 
American left wing when Washington's cavalry with 
ringing cheers dashed around the American flank and 
fell upon them. Caught between two fires the enemy 
was thrown into a confusion from which there could 
be no recovery. The two lines mingled in hand-to- 
hand conflict, and Colonel Washington and Colonel 
Tarleton in the midst of their men fought a sabre duel 
in which neither was injured, and which ended by Tarle- 



1 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 175 

ton's taking to flight, not through fear of personal in- 
jury, but because his men on every side were throwing 
down their arms and his capture was imminent. The 
day ended not merely in defeat for the British but in 
hopeless rout. They lost 230 in killed and wounded, 
600 prisoners, 1,000 stand of arms, and 2 field pieces. 
One of the enemy was killed, wounded, or captured 
for every American engaged, while the Americans lost 
but 12 killed and 61 wounded. This great dis- 
proportion between the losses is the more amazing 
when it is remembered that the Americans had no 
defensive works. Two hundred and thirty-one of the 
British escaped — some riding away with Tarleton, 
more making their way in small bands across the coun- 
try to join Cornwallis. In that one day's fighting the 
British general had lost fully one-third of his army for 
the subjugation of the South. 

Morgan was not unduly elated by the victory he 
had won. He knew that Cornwallis with a superior 
force would be quickly at his throat clamoring for re- 
venge, and he straightway set out to join Greene. That 
general, hearing of the victory, took a small party of 
dragoons and rode hard to meet his victorious lieu- 
tenant. The juncture was soon effected, and with 
Greene in command Morgan's force continued its flight 
toward the main American army with Cornwallis in 
hot pursuit. So great was the Earl's desire to give 
battle that he even destroyed his baggage train in order 
to march the faster. But the Americans raced the 
faster and at Guilford Court House, only thirty miles 
from the Virginia border, the American forces were 
reunited. Even then they were inferior to the British 
in numbers, and for a month or more Greene evaded 
a battle. But his force was steadily increasing and 
by the middle of March he outnumbered Cornwallis 
nearly two to one. Then at Guilford he stood and 



176 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

prepared to meet the shock of battle. Though the 
Americans had the advantage of numbers the British 
troops were all seasoned veterans, while the Patriots 
were in the main militia. 

The success of Morgan's formation at the Cowpens 
seems to have encouraged Greene to make a very 
similar disposition of his troops, though there was no 
river in the rear to cut off a possible retreat. His 
first line was made up of North Carolina militia. 
These he expected to run away, but he adjured them 
earnestly to fire a few deadly volleys before fleeing. 
As they were men used to the rifle in hunting, if not 
in war, he anticipated that their fire would cause the 
enemy some loss. Three hundred yards to the rear, 
in a patch of woods was the second line made up of 
Virginia militia, while on a hill four hundred yards 
farther back were the regulars of Maryland and Vir- 
ginia. On the flanks were the cavalry of Washington 
and Lee, and the sharpshooters of Campbell. Rather 
more than four thousand men stood ready to give the 
British battle. 

The enemy came on in gallant style and the untrained 
Carolinians withstood his advance but briefly. The 
Virginians, however, were more tenacious of their posi- 
tion and held the enemy long in check. But the tide 
of battle rolled back and forth with varying success 
for either side. Cornwallis handled his men with 
more caution than had Tarleton at the Cowpens, and 
though more than once some portion of his line was 
thrown into rout by the fierce dashes of Washington's 
cavalry he stubbornly reformed his lines and fought on. 
Night fell upon a drawn battle, though the Americans 
retired from the field. There was not great disparity 
in the losses — to the Americans about four hundred; 
to the British about six hundred. But the whole 
British force hardly exceeded 2,200 men and the loss 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 177 

of so large a portion of it made it utterly fatuous to 
risk another battle. Herein, even though the actual 
battle of Guilford be reckoned as a defeat for Greene, 
it proved the culmination of audacious strategy that 
had been thoroughly successful. He had enticed Corn- 
wallis far away from his base, from the coast where 
he might look to the fleet for aid, and crippled him 
so that he dared not fight again. Nor in his weakened 
state did Cornwallis dare to return to South Carolina 
whence he had come. Flight it is true was imperative, 
but it must be by the shortest route to the nearest place 
where the protecting guns of the fleet might afford him 
shelter. Wilmington seemed to offer such a haven of 
refuge and, abandoning his wounded in retreat, as he 
had burned his baggage train in the ardor of pursuit, 
the noble earl fled with the shattered remnant of his 
army. 

Two weeks only the British remained at Wilming- 
ton; then began the movement which ended in deliver- 
ing them into the hands of their adversaries. The be- 
lated activities and repeated successes of the Americans 
had brought to naught all the early successes in the 
Carolinas and Georgia. True, the British still held 
Charleston, Savannah, and Augusta, but the interior of 
these colonies was wholly unsubdued. Cornwallis might 
have returned to Charleston by sea, and begun once 
more the task of subjugation, but he had no taste for 
the work, which furthermore, savored somewhat of a 
retreat. Accordingly he determined to move over into 
Virginia. Benedict Arnold was there, prosecuting raids 
with a savagery that showed the position of a con- 
fessed traitor not conducive to a gentle disposition. 
General Phillips had just been sent down by Sir Henry 
Clinton with a considerable army and Cornwallis, by 
effecting a junction with these commands, found himself 
at Petersburg with a force of five thousand men. 



178 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

What he did thereafter was utterly unimportant until 
he surrendered at Yorktown. 

The withdrawal of Cornwallis left Greene with a 
free hand in the South. No one of the British gar- 
risons left there was strong enough to cope with him in 
the open, though behind their defensive works they 
would be able to give him a hard fight. He pursued 
Cornwallis for about fifty miles and then turned south- 
ward, having made up his mind to free South Carolina 
and Georgia from British domination. The question 
of strategy involved was a nice one. If he could force 
the retreating British into a battle and win it, he 
would completely wreck British power in the South. 
But Cornwallis showed every intention of refusing 
battle, and once at the coast and in communication witfi 
the British fleet would be no light adversary. It was 
better, thought Greene, to leave Cornwallis to his own 
devices, and swoop down upon the isolated British 
garrisons to the southward, all of which would be easy 
game unless Cornwallis turned in pursuit. 

Keeping his own counsel he turned toward Camden, 
1 60 miles distant, where the British had nine hundred 
men under command of Lord Rawdon. Cornwallis, 
perplexed by this move made no effort to follow, but 
pressed on into Virginia thinking no doubt that the 
importance of that colony was so great that Greene 
would be called back from whatever adventure he had 
undertaken, to afford protection to the towns and great 
estates of the Old Dominion. In this, however, he 
misjudged the temper of the Virginians. No cry went 
forth for Greene's return, and that officer marching 
swiftly invested Camden, and sent out Lee and Marion 
to reduce Fort Watson, a point on the British line of 
communications half-way to Charleston. The tak- 
ing of this fortress was amusing rather than san- 
guinary. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 179 

It stood on the crest of an Indian mound rising steeply 
forty feet high from level country, and was garrisoned 
by 120 picked riflemen. The fire and dash of Lee's 
and Marion's roughriders were little service here, for 
it was no place for cavalry. Artillery would have 
ended the fort in a jiffy but the besiegers had no guns. 
Dreading the heavy loss of life that would attend any 
effort to rush so powerful a work, the besiegers brought 
American ingenuity into play. All about them was 
the stately forest of Southern pine. The command 
was suddenly turned into axemen and carpenters. 
Leaving a few score of riflemen at the edge of the 
forest to keep the defenders of the fort busy, the rest 
of the Americans worked with axe and saw, until after 
five days' work the garrison saw rising before them, 
within easy rifle shot, a huge wooden tower from the 
top of which riflemen might command every corner of 
the fort. A breastwork of logs protected its base from 
any effort on the part of the garrison to rush it, while 
a ramparted platform at the top was crowded with 
men ready to pick off the British wherever they might 
seek refuge. It was a clear case of checkmate. Re- 
sistance would have been mere bloody sacrifice of 
the garrison, and the inevitable surrender was soon 
effected. 

Meantime Lord Rawdon, advancing from Camden, 
engaged the Americans and beat them. The defeat 
was decisive, but not sufficiently so as to justify Rawdon 
in reoccupying Camden with his connections severed 
through the loss of Fort Watson. Accordingly he 
retreated toward Charleston. The events of the suc- 
ceeding months need not be told in detail. There was 
almost constant fighting in the uplands of Georgia and 
the Carolinas, with victory almost invariably resting 
with the Americans. Most of the battles were small 
affairs, engaging only the partisan bands of Sumter, 



i8o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Marion, and Lee, until the main armies of Greene and 
Colonel Stuart, who had succeeded Lord Rawdon, 
came into collision at Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, 
about fifty miles from Charleston. In this action the 
British were decisively beaten in the first day of fight- 
ing, but rallied and regained on the second day all 
they had lost on the first. Whether to class it as an 
English or an American victory is a matter admitting 
of some doubt, but in the end it worked to the Ameri- 
can advantage, for the enemy retired from the 
position regained, and fled to Charleston where they 
were penned up for the rest of the war. Greene had 
saved the state for the Patriot cause, and presently 
thereafter all semblance of British authority in Georgia 
and North Carolina away from the coast was sur- 
rendered. In eighteen months the South, that seemed 
hopelessly lost, had been regained. Its redemption 
was largely the work of its own people, and the names 
of Sumter, Marion, Lee, Pickens, Moultrie, and 
Shelby are rightly placed high in the American table of 
fame. But while the partisan rangers and the local 
militia fought well and effectively, it must be conceded 
that the little nucleus of Continentals, the precursors 
of our regular army of to-day, formed in nearly every 
battle the cornerstone of the edifice of defence, the 
animating force of the attack. 

Cornwallis, in Virginia, heard of the collapse of the 
British authority in the South with no pleasant feelings. 
But the die was cast when he moved into Virginia, and 
he was too far away to do anything to aid Rawdon or 
Stuart. Moreover, he was beginning to worry a little 
about his own position. He was confronted only by 
Lafayette, whom the British called contemptuously " the 
boy," and about three thousand militia, as against his 
own five thousand veterans. None the less the Earl 
felt vaguely disquieted. He had hoped to be able to 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS i8i 

rouse the slaves against their masters, as had been done 
in South Carolina. But he found there that the relation 
of owner and slave had in it much of affection and mu- 
tual confidence. Instead of responding to his agents 
the blacks betrayed them and he very speedily aban- 
doned hope of this method of prosecuting war in Vir- 
ginia. 

Lafayette, despite his youth, irritated Cornwallis not 
a little. He set himself the task, of crushing the young 
marquis but the Frenchman showed a talent for swift 
evasion of attacks, while ever maintaining a menacing 
position of which he had not been thought capable. 
" The boy cannot escape me," wrote the Englishman, 
but the " boy " not only escaped him repeatedly, but 
manoeuvred him into a position from which he him- 
self could not escape. For Lafayette's force grew con- 
tinually. Cornwallis sent Tarleton on a raid to Char- 
lottesville to disband the legislature and if possible cap- 
ture the governor, Thomas Jefferson, who was on his 
estate at Monticello near-by. Jefferson escaped in the 
nick of time, warned by the faithful slaves whom the 
British general had hoped to corrupt. It is interesting 
to speculate upon what the British would have done 
with Jefferson had Tarleton caught him. The author 
of the Declaration of Independence could have hoped 
for but little mercy from Lord North's government, but 
on the other hand, the war had progressed too far for 
American captives, however obnoxious, to be treated 
merely as rebels. Nevertheless, Jefferson was doubt- 
less justified in sacrificing dignity to expedition when he 
fled from his home only a few minutes before Tarle- 
ton's raiders reached it. 

After this exploit Cornwallis proceeded in leisurely 
fashion toward the sea, having ever in mind the wisdom 
of keeping close to the fleet and his base of supplies. 
After a brief stay in Richmond, he marched down the 



i82 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

narrow peninsula between the James and the York 
rivers until he had reached Williamsburg, the Colonial 
capital and the seat of William and Mary College. 
Lafayette, who seemed no longer averse to being caught, 
since his forces had been increased to five thousand men 
by the arrival of Steuben, pressed hard on his rear, 
attacking him once but being beaten off with a loss of 
145 men. 

Had Cornwallis allowed himself to ponder upon the 
improbable in those summer days of 1781, he might 
have been somewhat concerned about his military pros- 
pects. On three sides his army was hemmed in by 
water. On the fourth he was confronted by an enemy 
his equal in numbers, though it is true, not in discipline 
or efficiency. But the Americans could be reenforced 
continually by land, while all supporting troops, all 
provisions and munitions of war for him had to come 
by sea. But the despised rebels had no navy, no way 
of menacing his easy communication with New York. 
So Cornwallis dismissed from his mind any disquieting 
thoughts, certain as he was that whenever he chose he 
could say good-bye to Lafayette and sail off to New 
York or to Charleston as he saw fit. 

Had Cornwallis known what was doing far from 
his own lines he would have been less easy in his mind. 
For some months Washington and Rochambeau had 
been planning a combined American and French attack 
on New York. To give any hope of success to the 
cooperation a great French fleet was necessary and now 
the Count de Grasse was on the ocean, bound for 
America with twenty-eight ships-of-the-line, and six 
frigates, carrying seventeen hundred guns and twenty 
thousand men. The British had no fleet in American 
waters at all capable of coping with it. There were no 
swift scouting steamers in those days, no cables nor 
wireless, and intelligence travelled but slowly. Wash- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 183 

ington was watching eagerly, wistful for more news, 
the operations of Greene in South Carolina and Lafay- 
ette in Virginia. He saw how precarious was the 
position of Cornwallis, provided the control of the sea 
could be wrested from the British, and he was racked 
with anxiety as to the plans of De Grasse. If the 
French fleet were to come direct to New York that 
would, of course, be the point at which to strike. But 
contemplating the position in which Cornwallis had put 
himself, Washington fairly itched to be at him, and 
when news arrived from De Grasse that he was on his 
way to the Chesapeake, the American army sprung from 
its position like hounds from a leash. 

Rochambeau's force had prior to this time joined 
Washington at West Point, and after providing for a 
sufficient garrison to hold that fortress in his absence, 
the American commander started southward with two 
thousand Continentals and four thousand Frenchmen. 
Rochambeau knew his destination but no one else, for 
it was vitally important that his movements should be 
cloaked in secrecy as far as possible. Clinton had still 
command of the sea, and if he learned in time that 
Washington contemplated marching his troops four 
hundred miles from West Point to Virginia, he would 
undoubtedly put his army on ships and hurry to the 
succor of Cornwallis. Accordingly, Washington 
marched as far from the Hudson as possible. Even 
so, Clinton learned that the Continental army was in 
motion but imagined it was Washington's plan to 
occupy Staten Island and hold it until De Grasse should 
come up. Washington furthered this delusion in every 
possible way, feinting against Staten Island, and even 
beginning the erection of quarters as though preparing 
for a protracted campaign. Not until September 2, 
178 1, when the Americans were marching through the 
streets of Philadelphia did Clinton fairly wake up to 



i84 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the fact that he had been Ignored and that Washington 
was closing down upon CornwalHs, who was in a trap 
from which there could be no escape. 

As Washington led the allied armies of French and 
Americans through the streets of the quaint Quaker City, 
all alert and eager for a battle in which all were con- 
fident of victory, his mind must have turned back to the 
time, early In the days of the Revolution, when he fled 
through the same streets with the British triumphantly 
pressing upon his rear guard. Three years had passed 
away. The American army had sustained the sufferings 
of Valley Forge, the reverses at Savannah and Charles- 
ton, and the treason of Arnold. It had endured and 
survived the utter impotence of Congress. It had 
starved, not cheerfully but still with resignation, and 
had endured without revolt the inchoate state of the 
National finances and currency that made the soldiers' 
pay an often deferred hope, and a mockery when it 
was finally tendered. There had been no really great 
Patriot victory during this period, but on the other 
hand, the British had made no progress toward the 
subjugation of the colonies. A revolution is trium- 
phant as long as it persists. Its continued existence Is in 
itself a victory. The forces of King George now held 
New York, Charleston, and Savannah and practically 
nothing else. Small wonder is It that as Washington 
passed through Philadelphia and out into the country 
through which he had fled before Howe, he should feel 
the spirit of victory animating him. At Chester he 
learned that De Grasse had arrived in Chesapeake Bay, 
and he hastily sent back the joyful tidings to Philadel- 
phia, where It was hailed with the ringing of bells, 
parading bands, and mighty revelry In the taverns and 
tap-rooms. On the 5th of September, the army boarded 
waiting ships at the head of Chesapeake Bay and 
dropped down to Yorktown. It took thirteen days to 



1 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 185 

make the voyage, which is now accomplished by steamer 
in a few hours. 

Good fortune, or fate, played a determining part in 
the operations leading up to the climax of the Ameri- 
can Revolution. De Grasse, on leaving the West 
Indies for North America, had been hotly pursued by 
Admiral Hood with an English fleet of inferior quality. 
But Hood was one of the dashing sea-fighters of the 
days of war in which England won that primacy on the 
high seas that has never been wrested from her. His 
superior in command, Admiral Rodney, one of Eng- 
land's patriotic sailors, had been invalided home, and 
Hood was naturally eager to seize upon this moment 
to win a victory and make a name. Had he overtaken 
the French he would have given them battle and possi- 
bly have cut them up so badly that they would have been 
unfit for cooperation with Washington and Rocham- 
beau. But his very dash proved his undoing, for so 
eagerly did he pursue his foe that he ran by the French 
fleet at night or in murky weather, and cruised on up the 
North American coast looking eagerly for the enemy 
whom he had left behind. He entered Chesapeake Bay 
but finding no French fleet dashed on to New York, sure 
that place must be De Grasse's objective. There he 
found Admiral Graves in command of the British fleet 
and the two combining their fleets, returned to Chesa- 
peake Bay as fast as favoring winds could urge their 
vessels. 

The moment of Hood's arrival at New York was 
dramatic. The situation was big with vital Importance 
to the new nation. Clinton, vaguely disquieted by the 
disappearance of Washington from the West Point 
neighborhood, had no idea where he had gone nor any 
facts on which to base a conjecture as to the American 
commander's strategy. He knew, of course, that Corn- 
wallls was at Yorktown, but with the British In control 



i86 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of the sea, he could be in no better place. He was well 
fortified, and if Washington should be successful in an 
attack on his works he could still load his men on trans- 
ports and bring them up to New York. Meanwhile, 
it would be easy for Clinton to send him reenforcements 
by sea, and this he was preparing to do when the news 
brought by Hood put an entirely new face upon the sit- 
uation. With the French in control of Chesapeake 
Bay, there could be no retreat, nor any reenforcements 
for Cornwallis. If Washington hesitated to attack the 
English works, he could sit down placidly and watch 
them starve into submission. The trap was sprung. 
It could be opened in only two ways — either by the de- 
feat of Washington for which the available British 
force was inadequate, or by the destruction of the 
French fleet and this task Admirals Graves and Hood 
undertook but not too hopefully. 

Their combined fleets reached the mouth of Chesa- 
peake Bay the very day that Washington began em- 
barking his troops at its head. The French fleet was 
found and attacked without hesitation. What English 
victory in that battle would have meant to the Ameri- 
can cause can be seen clearly. Not only would the 
way have been open for the escape or the reenforce- 
ment of Cornwallis, but the lighter ships of the vic- 
torious British fleet might have pushed on up the bay to 
where Washington was coming down in unarmed trans- 
ports and either compelled his surrender or annihilated 
him. The American cause saw many crucial mo- 
ments but there seems to have been the climax 
of them all. But again fate was with the strug- 
gling Colonists. After a two hours' sea fight the British 
withdrew, about seven hundred men having been killed 
or wounded in the two fleets. In a sense the battle 
was indecisive for there was but little damage inflicted 
on either contestant, though the British did, indeed, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 187 

bum one frigate which was too badly crippled to be 
seaworthy. But in a broader sense it was the decisive 
victory of the war, for the withdrawal of the British 
fleet sealed the fate of Cornwallis, and the loss of his 
army meant the loss of the colonies to King George. 

Of the disaster in store for him, Cornwallis had at 
this moment no premonition. Lafayette's lines before 
him shut off all information of the approach of Wash- 
ington, but as soon as the French troops from the fleet 
had been landed, the young Frenchman, " the boy," as 
Cornwallis had airily called him, came farther down 
the Peninsula and extended his lines across it at its nar- 
rowest point near Williamsburg. That was the last 
chance for Cornwallis to escape. He was still strong 
enough to attack " the boy " with a fair chance of vic- 
tory, and had he known of Washington's approach 
he would certainly have done so. But ignorant of that 
vital factor, he contented himself with strengthening 
his earthworks, and settled down to await the return 
of Graves who, he felt sure, would speedily collect a 
naval force strong enough to drive away the French 
fleet. While he was thus quiescent Washington arrived 
and took command. When his army had all been con- 
centrated, he had sixteen thousand men at Williams- 
burg, and the fate of the British was sealed. 

Yet there was still a possibility of disaster to the 
Patriot cause. Washington had the cards, but it 
was his task to play them rightly. De Grasse was 
getting nervous. He had heard that the fall was the 
season of hurricanes, he feared the return of the British 
in greater numbers, he liked better the balmy air of 
the West Indies, and proposed seriously to sail thither 
leaving but two ships to cooperate with Washington. 
The latter argued and implored. He had to push 
forward the siege of Yorktown in front, and plead all 
the time with the French admiral not to open the back 



i88 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

door to Cornwallis's escape. The Frenchman seemed 
hardly to comprehend how epochal was the impending 
victory in which he had the opportunity to participate. 
While he was still arguing, Washington pushed for- 
ward his parallels and approaches. Alexander Hamil- 
ton and the Vicomte de Viomeuil carried two of the 
redoubts by storm. More than seventy cannon were 
pounding away at the British works and on the 17th of 
October, the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's sur- 
render, Cornwallis hoisted the white flag. That very 
day Sir Henry Clinton sailed from New York with 
25 ships-of-the-line, 10 frigates and 7,000 of his best 
troops, arriving at the mouth of the Chesapeake five 
days too late. Had Washington wavered, or delayed 
in pressing the attack, the battle that ended the War 
of the Revolution might never have been fought, or if 
fought, might have ended disastrously to the American 
cause. 

For Yorktown marked the end of the war. With 
it Cornwallis surrendered an army of 7,247 with 840 
seamen, their colors and arms. To General Lincoln, 
whom Cornwallis had captured at Charleston, the Brit- 
ish commander was now forced to surrender his own 
sword, and he showed how little he liked the ceremony 
by pleading illness and making his submission in his 
sick room. For some reason the British had always 
found a peculiar pleasure in playing their enemy's 
tunes, seeming to think it a sort of taunt. Accordingly, 
when the details of the surrender came to be deter- 
mined, the Americans stipulated that the English bands 
must play an English or a German tune — for because 
of the hired Hessians the Americans took pleasure in 
harping upon England's debt to Germany. But while 
this condition was duly observed, some humorist in the 
British camp robbed it of much of its ignominy, for the 
tune selected for the final march out of the surrendered 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 189 

army was no national air, but a popular tune much in 
vogue at the time called, " The World Turned Upside 
Down ! " 

Indeed when the news of this defeat reached London, 
the King and his ministers thought that the world must 
have fallen into that topsy-turvy state. After five 
years of effort, the British endeavors to repress the 
rebellious Colonists had ended just where they began. 
Cornwallis's attempt at the subjugation of Virginia had 
turned out as did Pitcairn's march on Lexington, only 
a little more disastrously. Four years to a day after 
England's first great army of invasion under Burgoyne 
surrendered at Saratoga, the white flag fluttered over 
the redoubts at Yorktown. Cornwallis, in all his South- 
ern campaigns, had not lost a battle, yet wound up in 
crushing defeat. Greene, who had been sent by Wash- 
ington with a puny force to give aid and succor to the 
South, had not won a battle yet he had redeemed Geor- 
gia and the Carolinas and lured Cornwallis to his doom. 
Such results could have followed only in a land the 
dominant spirit of which was loyalty to the Patriot 
cause. The news reached England at a moment when, 
even without it, the fortunes of that nation seemed, 
indeed, in a desperate strait. She was at war with 
France, Holland, Spain, her subjects in India and her 
colonies in America. The King, stubborn in defeat, 
demanded that the war go on, but Lord North no less 
committed to the policy of oppression which had roused 
the colonies to revolt, recognized the completeness of 
the disaster and cried in despair, " It is all over." In 
Parliament the opposition party, headed by Fox and 
Pitt, openly rejoiced over the news of Yorktown and a 
resolution declaring further efforts to coerce the Ameri- 
cans inexpedient failed by but forty-seven votes. 
Brought up again on February 22 — Washington's 
birthday by a significant coincidence — it came within one 



I90 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

vote of success, and five days later was passed and 
Lord North's ministry fell. With the subsequent po- 
litical events that culminated in the Treaty of Paris 
and American independence this Story of Our Army 
has nothing to do. 

But while the politicians and the diplomats abroad 
were trying to bring order out of war's chaos Wash- 
ington, at home, was striving to make doubly sure the 
victory he had won. There was no certainty that York- 
town betokened the end. The British still held New 
York, Charleston, and some lesser Southern ports, and 
Washington tried to persuade De Grasse to cooperate 
with him in an attack on Charleston. But the French- 
man, for no particular reason, demurred and went back 
to his cruising in the West Indies, where in the following 
April Admiral Rodney, restored to health, fell upon 
him and totally defeated him. Though his name was 
linked with the victory that put a new nation on the 
map, it became also identified in France with one of 
that nation's greatest naval disasters. Better far 
would it have been for his fame had he responded to 
the overtures of Washington and joined in finally 
sweeping the British from the coast of America. The 
combined French and American forces could have ac- 
complished this beyond doubt. As it is, while the 
victory at Yorktown was undoubtedly due to French 
naval support, history will ever record that that support 
was given but grudgingly by the French commander, 
and that at the crucial moment it required the earnest, 
almost passionate appeals of Washington to dissuade 
him from sailing away on the very eve of the victory. 
The French have always been insistent upon their share 
of the glory of Yorktown, but there, as in the case of 
D'Estaing, at Newport, the foibles and jealousy of the 
commander militated against the best service and even 
put victory in jeopardy. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 191 

Had Congress had its own way, or for that matter, 
had the various local governments been relied upon, 
the colonies would have been left naked to their enemies 
immediately upon the downfall of Cornwallis. There 
could be no assurance that the war was ended. As a 
matter of fact, it was not ended until the Treaty of 
Paris, nine months later. But Congress acted as 
though, indeed, as Lord North had wailed, *' all was 
over." Though Washington wrote repeatedly, and 
made appeals in person that action should be taken 
to continue the war, Congress made no response. Even 
more. It failed to pay the soldiers for their services, 
and even discussed the proposition of mustering them 
out without payment for the past or provision for the 
future. Washington protested with hot indignation. 
The cruel injustice of the proposition affronted his sense 
of honor, the danger in it aroused his grave apprehen- 
sions. The army was not a great one, but it was the 
one coherent armed force in the land. If it chose to 
set itself up as the sole source of power, there was noth- 
ing to oppose it effectively. It was quite capable, 
should the spirit seize upon it, of reenacting the deeds 
of the Praetorian guards, or Cromwell's army. In 
fact, the situation in the infant Confederacy in 1782, 
was just that which we have observed in some of the 
Central American governments where independence 
won by the sword has resulted in a military despotism, 
because of the inability of the civil government to meet 
the just demands of the soldiers. There is not the 
slightest doubt that overtures were made to Washing- 
ton to make himself dictator with the Continental army 
at his back. And it would have been easy for him to 
stifle his democratic instincts with the plea that in this 
emergency a savior of his country was needed, one who 
could bring order out of chaos, set the machinery of 
democracy in perfect order, and then retire to let it do 



192 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

its perfect work. Perhaps no military dictator ever as- 
sumed power except on the plea that he was undertaking 
a purely temporary duty. But once installed, they are 
ever hard to dislodge. Washington met all such prop- 
ositions with stern disapproval. Though he sympa- 
thized with the ill-treated army, he sternly repressed 
any threats of a military uprising. 

The time came when something more than the quiet 
exercise of his influence through personal interviews 
was necessary to repress the rising storms. An artfully 
written address, setting forth the wrongs and the suffer- 
ings of the soldiers and the impotence or ingratitude of 
Congress was circulated widely throughout the camps, 
and was having its effect. It frankly called the army to 
action and counselled force. Discussions of the policy 
thus advocated were common in every camp. Even 
with officers present the discussion of a general mutiny 
was open. Washington set himself to stay the storm. 
In general orders, read to every command in the army, 
he condemned the address. More than that he called 
a meeting of his officers and rising, took out his glasses, 
saying, " You see, gentlemen, I have grown both blind 
and gray in your service," after which he began his 
appeal. It was an earnest adjuration to the army not 
to sully its glorious record of endurance and achieve- 
ment by a conclusion in mutiny and revolt. He begged 
them to retain confidence in the government they had 
defended and promised that he would see that that 
government acted with justice. His great influence 
turned the scale. The advocates of an uprising were 
for a time silenced. Before they could renew their 
plotting. Congress had acted — belatedly and ungener- 
ously, but still in a way to quiet the most bitter com- 
plaints. The soldiers were sent to their homes, with 
their half-pay commuted to a lump sum, with land war- 
rants in further payment for their services, and with 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 193 

the old flint locks that had served them so well for the 
five years as memorials of a not over-grateful country. 
It was 1783 before peace was actually proclaimed, 
though it had existed in fact since shortly after the 
downfall of Cornwallis. In November of that year, 
the British set sail from the Battery in New York and 
Washington with his tattered Continentals marched in. 
By way of a final taunt, the departing troops had nailed 
a British ensign to a staff on the Battery and slushed 
the pole so that it tested the ingenuity of a group of 
sailors to get the repudiated bit of bunting down. That 
was the final dramatic act of the war. But the end 
of the Continental army, the germ of our regular army 
of to-day may be said to have come when Washington 
took leave of his oflScers in the dining hall of Fraunce's 
Tavern, which still stands in Broad Street, New York. 
There, after that Farewell Address which is cherished 
as one of our ablest state papers, the Commander-in- 
Chief pressed the hand of each oflScer, and as later his 
barge faded from their sight on the broad waters of 
New York Bay, they turned each to his individual cal- 
ling. The Continental army was no more. 



CHAPTER IX 

The War of 1812 — Lack of Military Resources — Reverses on the 
Canadian Border — Battle of Queenstown — Cockburn on the 
Chesapeake — The Capture of Washington — Battle of New Or- 
leans — The Treaty of Ghent. 

Ever since history began to be made in America, be- 
fore the creation of the United States, indeed, our peo- 
ple have feared a large standing army. In the days of 
Washington and Jefferson, as in the later days of 
Roosevelt, popular reliance for defence has always been 
placed upon that " well-ordered militia," which has 
become almost a fetich among us, but which has usually 
figured more gloriously in stump speeches than on the 
battle field. Morgan at the Cowpens recognized the 
inevitable and bluffly told the militiamen he had posted 
on the first line, " Just hold up your heads boys; three 
fires and you are free." In battle and skirmish, it was 
almost the regular thing for the militia to run away, 
until the example of steadiness set by the regulars en- 
couraged them to stand their ground. Between 1776 
and 1 86 1, the militia ran away or mutinied in no less 
than thirty battles or marches. This record does not 
mean to imply that militiamen are made of other stuff 
than regulars. Humanity is much alike and courage is 
not put on with any particular kind of uniform. But 
the professional is usually more eflEcient than the ama- 
teur, and long years of drill, the enforced habit of 
obedience, and above all, the familiarity of the regular 
with scenes of battle and bloodshed make him more 
trustworthy than the militiaman when the guns begin 
to play. In a long war the militiamen who remain in 
service throughout get to be as steady and dependable 

194 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 195 

as the regulars themselves. This was particularly the 
case in our Civil War, which was fought on the part of 
the North by 2,605,341 militia and volunteers, and only 
about 67,000 regulars. Notwithstanding the difference 
in efficiency, the militia have always been the more 
popular with the people. Their doings and achieve- 
ments in time of war furnish themes for countless songs 
of praise. " I ain't no hero, I'm just a regular," said 
a trooper in the Spanish War, who was disgusted by 
popular adulation for an act which to him was all in 
the day's work. 

The day after Washington delivered his Farewell 
Address, the whole Continental army was disbanded, 
with the exception of one regiment of infantry and 
two battalions of artillery, retained to guard public 
property and stationed at West Point. One of these 
batteries, raised originally by Alexander Hamilton, has 
remained in continued service — Battery F, of the 
Fourth Regiment of Artillery. During the days of 
the Confederacy, prior to the adoption of the Con- 
stitution in 1789, Congress made spasmodic efforts to 
keep a small regular force in the field. There was oc- 
casional need for such a body. Indian troubles required 
constant vigilance on the frontier; and in 1786, Shay's 
Rebellion, in the course of which two thousand insur- 
gents, clamorous for paper money and resisting the 
collection of debts, marched on the Springfield arsenal 
but were dispersed by the artillery stationed there. 
Later still the so-called Whiskey Insurrection required 
the employment of troops from the eastern colonies 
to overawe the rebellious mountaineers of Kentucky 
and Tennessee among whom whiskey was almost as 
much of a circulating medium as a beverage. It was 
practically their only manufactured product and a tax 
upon it appeared to them more tyrranous than the tax 
upon tea that drove the colonies into rebellion. But 



196 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

in the main, domestic insurrection and Indian outbreaks 
alike were resisted by militia, and there were enough 
such occasions to demonstrate how very insufficient a 
force for order and mutual defence this was. 

When the mutterings of the second war with Eng- 
land began to be heard, the standing army of the 
United States was but 6,744 strong. Even this force 
had been gathered with difficulty. Congress was not 
enamored of the idea of a standing army. When the 
proposition to increase the force to 35,000 men was 
first broached in that body, the fiery John Randolph, 
of Roanoke, vehemently denounced the project of sub- 
mitting the liberties of American citizens to the guar- 
dianship of mercenaries gathered up in taverns and 
brothels. But when he saw the day going against 
him, he urged an amendment to the bill providing that 
in time of peace the army be engaged in works of 
general utility — building roads, digging drainage ditches 
and improving harbors. The Virgianian's proposition 
was bitterly denounced as tending to degrade the sol- 
diers to the level of convicts, but it had in it an element 
of reason. The professional work on the Panama 
Canal has just been completed by United States army 
engineers, and the success of that undertaking will un- 
doubtedly lead to the commitment of public work to 
army supervision in a continually increasing degree. 

Looking backward one is amazed at the calm con- 
fidence with which the Congress of the United States 
declared war upon Great Britain. Nothing was 
thought of but an offensive campaign and a brilliant 
series of victories. It was admitted that we had no 
navy to cope with that of Great Britain, but it was 
predicted that American privateers would sweep British 
commerce from the ocean — a prediction that was fairly 
well fulfilled. A navy maintained at private cost, that 
is to say, privately owned vessels fighting for prize 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 197 

money, and an army mainly composed of volunteers, 
with a core, so to speak, of regulars was the description 
congressional orators gave of the forces that were to 
abase British pride, "The acquisition of Canada this 
year," wrote Jefferson from the scholarly seclusion of 
Monticello, " as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, 
will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us 
experience for the attack of Halifax, and next the 
final expulsion of the British from the American con- 
tinent." 

Alas for the philosopher's hopes! The American 
forces never even menaced Quebec or Halifax, and as 
for the " mere matter of marching" on Canadian soil, 
the motley forces of the young republic never got far 
out of sound of the rushing waters of the Detroit and 
Niagara Rivers. To provide for this military pro- 
gramme the United States had about four thousand 
regulars under arms and fit for service, but widely scat- 
tered. The law authorized the increase of the regular 
force by 10,000 men, the enrollment of 50,000 volun- 
teers, and the shifting to national service of 100,000 
militia from the various states. But the enactment of 
the law was the least part of the business. Enlistments 
were slow in every branch of the service. A man who 
enlisted in the regular army for five years was given a 
bounty of sixteen dollars, and promised food, clothing, 
and five dollars a month for the period of his service. 
At the expiration of his service he was to receive fifteen 
dollars in cash and 160 acres of land. But at the 
end of three months barely 4,000 had enlisted. Of 
the 50,000 militia called for, barely one-twelfth came 
forward. Local sentiment concerning the righteous- 
ness of the war varied greatly, and while in some 
quarters heavy bounties were offered to induce enlist- 
ments, in others the war fever was so strong that a 
draft was actually needed to select those who should 



198 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

stay at home. In general, however, enlistments were 
slow, and when the regular army numbered 36,000 on 
paper, it had less than 4,000 men in fact. The situa- 
tion was by no means improved by the CQntention of 
certain states that Congress had no right to call out 
the militia unless the governor of the state furnishing 
the troops agreed that the necessity for them existed. 
The governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut de- 
nied that there was such need, and refused to issue the 
call. Later the militia of both Ohio and New York 
refused to cross into Canada, in the face of an enemy, 
on the plea that they were not bound to serve in a 
foreign land. This question of the duties and rights 
of the militia harassed our commanders throughout 
the war. 

Despite their military weakness, the American people 
rushed confidently, almost gaily into the war. Hardly 
had war been formally declared, when the cry was 
raised, " On to Canada," and the military authorities 
gave it instant heed. The whole nation agreed with 
Thomas Jefferson that to overrun Canada as far as 
Quebec would merely give the army needed practice in 
marching, but the country ignored the fact that by the 
possession of a few armed ships on the lakes, the Brit- 
ish controlled water transportation and could thus 
convey their troops and munitions of war from place to 
place with comparative expedition, while the Americans 
were laboriously cutting roads through the forests and 
bridging swamps. 

The plan of campaign laid out for the first year of 
the war was limited to the subjugation of Canada. 
It comprehended the same elements of weakness that 
brought disaster to Burgoyne in the Revolution. Three 
expeditions were to invade Canada, one starting from 
Detroit, one crossing the Niagara River near its mouth, 
and the third proceeding into the enemy's country by 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 199 

way of Lake George and Lake Champlain — the old 
route down which Burgoyne had come to New York 
filled with high hopes and destined to dismal disaster. 

It seems ever the failing of a weak belligerent to 
plan its offensive movements on a scale far beyond its 
military capacity. So it was with the United States in 
18 12. The instinct that led those who planned the 
grand strategy to order an invasion of Canada was a 
true one. To force the fighting in the enemy's country 
was the best way to dismay the foe and make the war 
popular at home. But the strategy was too grand for 
the forces at hand to give it effect. One expedition 
into Canada might have succeeded — the three failed. 

Detroit was then a mere military post where the 
great city of that name now spreads far up and down 
the matchless river. It was the true frontier of the 
United States, though at Michillimachinac, which sum- 
mer tourists know as Mackinaw, and at Fort Dearborn 
standing at the mouth of the now busy Chicago River, 
there were isolated army posts. General William 
Hull, who had rendered distinguished services in the 
Revolution, was Governor of the Territory of Michi- 
gan, and at the first rumors of war Congress made him 
a brigadier-general, and put him in command of about 
two thousand troops in Ohio with orders to take them 
to Detroit for service against the Indians. Events 
proved that age and perhaps a native tendency to vacil- 
lation, made Hull no man for the work alloted to him, 
but until submitted to the test he had the confidence of 
the government and of the country. When war was 
declared on June 18, Hull was in complete Ignorance 
of the fact, and so remained until the 2d of July. The 
English commanders In Canada were better served by 
their government, so that when Hull, thinking to ex- 
pedite matters, loaded all his personal and military 
papers into a great chest and shipped them by schooner 



200 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

to Detroit, never dreaming of hostile interference, the 
Canadians captured the craft and with it complete 
knowledge of his plans and strength. 

Early in July, however, responding to orders from 
Washington, Hull crossed into Canada and took pos- 
session of Maiden about fifteen miles below Detroit. 
It was then, as it long has been, a favorite delusion of 
the people of the United States that the Canadians 
were restive under the British government and eager 
for an opportunity to link their fortunes with those of 
" the land of the free and the home of the brave." 
Hull, as much a prey to this delusion as any, signalized 
his seizure of Maiden by a proclamation asking the 
Canadians to rally about his standand — a trumpet blast 
that fell upon indifferent ears. Fort Maiden, which 
General Hull menaced with proclamations — and never 
with any more serious missiles, held a small British 
force. It was a mere stockade, erected originally as 
a defence against the Indians, but Hull hesitated long 
about assaulting it. He had no artillery, and three- 
fourths of his men were raw militiamen. True, they 
clamored to be led against the enemy and even showed 
signs of mutiny as the period of inaction dragged on. 
But while the colonel of one regular regiment reported 
his men quite fit to bear the brunt of the assault, the 
three militia colonels expressed doubt as to the conduct 
of their untrained levies. Being in doubt, Hull did 
nothing — thereby encouraging the enemy, and greatly 
disheartening his own army. In all he had about i,6oo 
effective men, about 300 being regulars, while the 
enemy was of about equal strength with 280 regulars 
and about 230 Indians. There is every reason to be- 
lieve that had Hull attacked promptly he would have 
carried the British post, a success the value of which 
may be judged by his statement to the Secretary of 
War in a letter: " If Maiden was in our possession, I 







• ^■i^ 






FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 201 

could march this army to Niagara or York (Toronto) 
in a short time." 

But Maiden was not destined to American occupa- 
tion. While Hull hesitated the Canadians, who at 
first had seemed either affrighted by or indifferent to 
the American invasion, began to show signs of hostility. 
Foraging parties that, at first, had met with no resis- 
tance, began to encounter sharp opposition. The 
" embattled farmers " were against the Americans this 
time and the stone-walls around Sandwich spat out 
bullets at Hull's men as had those around Lexington at 
the British invaders nearly forty years before. Mean- 
while the British were strengthening their works, and 
were reenforced by about sixty men from Fort Niagara. 
To further discourage the Americans, there arrived at 
Detroit the garrison of Fort Mackinac with the tidings 
of the downfall of that frontier post, and the warning 
that a large party of warriors was coming down the 
lake to attack Detroit. Irresolute and hesitant, Hull 
abandoned his position on Canadian soil and recrossed 
to Detroit. 

Detroit then had about eight hundred inhabitants 
and a fort by the riverside made up of earthworks and 
a double stockade. Strong enough in itself, the fort 
was not one which could withstand a protracted siege, 
for it was two hundred miles from any point whence 
reenforcements or supplies might be drawn, and the 
road was exposed to British attacks by water or Indian 
ambushments. Hull wished to abandon the post and 
retreat to a point near where Toledo now stands, but 
was deterred by the very frank declaration of his Ohio 
colonels that their troops would refuse further 
obedience if he showed such weakness. The British, 
quick enough to detect the signs of vacillation in the 
American camp, sent raiding parties across the river 
and an expedition sent out by Hull to open communica- 



202 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tions with Ohio posts was attacked by a force of British 
and Indians and, though victorious in the skirmish, re- 
turned to the fort with its errand undischarged. 

Daily the British attitude became more menacing, 
and the situation within the American lines more dis- 
creditable. Hull's army was practically in revolt. 
The militia colonels offered to arrest the general, and 
give the command to Lieutenant-Colonel Miller, of the 
regulars, but that officer declined to accept so irregular 
a promotion. While the British were busy erecting 
batteries on their side of the river, the Americans 
made no preparations to meet the attack which was 
clearly foreshadowed. Presently fire was opened from 
the Canadian shore, which could have been of but little 
effect with the then primitive artillery, but under 
cover of it, General Brock, who had come from 
Niagara to take command of the British forces, 
crossed the river about two miles below the fort. 
Brock had 330 regulars and 400 militia, with 
about 600 Indians who were scattered in the 
forests seeking to harass about 350 Ohio militia- 
men who had been sent out the day before to bring 
up some supplies which were about thirty-five miles 
away. Hull had under his immediate command about 
one thousand men, yet with this superior force, he 
permitted the enemy to cross a swift stream, almost a 
mile wide, and make a landing unopposed. From the 
moment of that landing, Hull acted as one paralyzed 
with fear. No assault was necessary to make the 
British triumph complete. The approach of a mere 
reconnoitring party was made the occasion of a hasty 
display of the white flag, and Detroit, the fort, three 
hundred regular officers and men, and about two thou- 
sand militia were surrendered to the British. As only 
the day before the Indians had massacred the little 
American garrison at Fort Dearborn — a massacre corn- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 203 

memorated by a bronze group at the foot of Sixteenth 
Street in Chicago — the frontier of the United States 
was pushed back to the Wabash and Maumee rivers, 
and could not have been held even there had it been 
seriously menaced. 

Hull was court-martialed for treason and cowardice, 
found guilty and sentenced to be shot, but was pardoned 
by the President in consideration of his distinguished 
services in the Revolution and because of extenuating 
circumstances. These circumstances grew out of the 
action of General Henry Dearborn, in command of the 
American forces in the East. 

Like Hull, General Dearborn was now of advanced 
years, and of peaceful rather than warlike habit. He 
was, indeed, summoned from the placid and profitable 
political post of collector of the port of Boston to take 
command of the American armies in the East, with 
headquarters at Albany. His orders were to support 
Hull by making a determined attack upon the British 
at Niagara, where General Stephen Van Renssalaer was 
in command, and himself to organize and lead with 
promptitude an invasion of Canada. He did neither. 
On the contrary, at the very moment when Hull was 
most seriously threatened by the enemy, Dearborn en- 
tered upon an armistice with Prevost, the chief British 
commander, the effect of which was to release General 
Brock from all anxiety concerning any American attack 
upon Niagara. That alert general took advantage of 
this kindly cessation of hostilities to rush across Canada 
to the Detroit River, overthrow Hull and make his 
army prisoners and return to Niagara before the ar- 
mistice was concluded. This fatal failure of Dearborn 
to obey his orders was one of the extenuating circum- 
stances that saved the life of Hull after his death 
sentence by the court-martial. 

On the Niagara frontier, as on that fixed by the 



204 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Detroit River, the record of the American arms was 
inglorious. It was a story of failure when all con- 
ditions save that of military preparedness and vigor 
should have made for success. The American troops, 
such as they were, made their camp at Lewiston, where 
the river after its mad plunge through Niagara Gorge 
widens into a broad and placid estuary. Here in Aug- 
ust, 1 8 12 — four days after Hull's surrender, though of 
that he was ignorant — General Van Renssalaer found 
awaiting him about one thousand men, mostly militia- 
men, half-clad, ill-shod, undrilled, and with their pay 
long overdue. If there was military zeal in the army, 
these conditions did much to obscure it, while its mani- 
festation by an immediate attack upon the enemy would 
have been worse than futile, for there were no cannon, 
no cannoneers, not above ten rounds of ammuni- 
tion per man, and no lead wherewith to make more 
bullets. 

The new general's first task was to mould his army 
into military form and this he did with some measure 
of success, appealing the while for reenforcements until 
he had increased his force to five thousand men, includ- 
ing one regiment of United States regulars. The spirit 
of the troops was high. The men demanded to be led 
against the foe, and their martial wrath was further 
excited by the British, who vauntingly paraded the 
captives brought from Detroit on the river's bank 
within full view of the American lines. Those cap- 
tives, by the way, were the regular soldiers only, the 
victorious British commander having scornfully dis- 
missed to their homes the captured militiamen. 

Queenstown, the British post directly across the river 
from Lewiston, was garrisoned by about three hundred 
men only, including two companies of British regulars. 
That looked like an easy morsel for Van Renssalaer 
to gobble. On the night of October lo, it being dark 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 205 

and stormy, the Americans essayed to cross the river 
and gather in this petty handful of Britons. Several 
hundred men huddled together on the beach, guarding 
the priming of their guns from the driving rain, and 
boasting of the deeds they were about to accomplish. 
One boat, loaded to the limit, pushed off and disap- 
peared in the blackness. They bustled to make ready 
a second, when it was discovered that all the oars for 
the flotilla had been carried away in the vanished craft. 
To call It back by shouts would be to alarm the enemy. 
So wet and grumbling the warriors watched until dawn 
broke, and were marched back to camp mightily dis- 
gusted with their leadership. 

The next day the enterprise was renewed and thir- 
teen boats landed twenty-five men each on the Canadian 
shore under a sharp fire from the enemy. The in- 
vaders, in full view of their comrades on the American 
side, bore themselves well under fire, and drove the 
Canadians back toward Queenstown. Fired by the spec- 
tacle, some four hundred more crossed from the Ameri- 
can side, and the Canadians rallying, a general battle 
began in which the Americans had at first the advantage 
of numbers. On the heights above Queenstown, where 
now Americans making the Niagara Gorge trip may see 
a towering monument commemorating British valor, 
was a battery commanding the town and the plains be- 
low. A gentle slope led up to the heights on the land- 
ward side but toward the river the acclivity was so 
steep that Colonel Brock, the victor of Detroit, 
thought that no defence on that side was needed. 
While he watched the battle raging on the plain before 
him. Captain Wool with a handful of American regu- 
lars scaled the steep front, and made their appearance 
within the works so suddenly that Brock and' his men 
escaped capture only by precipitate flight. 

The lodgement thus easily effected by the Americans 



2o6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

was of the highest importance. It gave the Americans 
command of Queenstown and of the entrance to the 
Niagara River. Brock, a clear-headed and gallant sol- 
dier, saw its value and determined upon its recapture. 
With a hurriedly marshalled force he led an assault 
but was beaten back. Rallying his men again, this time 
in larger numbers, for reenforcements were now coming 
in from neighboring British posts, he led the way a 
second time but fell, shot through the lungs — a gallant 
and commanding spirit well worthy of the impressive 
monument that marks the spot for which he fought so 
well. Beyond the river, on the American side, the 
militiamen stood by the brink and gazed stupidly across 
at the battle raging. Officers breaking away from the 
conflict rushed to the water-side and shouted orders that 
they come over and make the British rout complete. 
They made no move, but with murmurs of horror and 
gestures of fear, clustered about the boats that were 
bringing over the wounded from the battle field. Van 
Renssalaer, weak from four wounds, went among them 
begging them to act like men and go to their embattled 
comrades' aid. But appeals to patriotism, pride, and 
manhood were unavailing. From a body of soldiers 
they became a pack of lawyers. They were militiamen, 
th-ey declared, and as such, could not be compelled to 
serve in a foreign country. The spectacle of their 
countrymen falling before the fire of the British moved 
them not a whit from their inglorious stand upon their 
strict constitutional rights. Instead they watched the 
British, in growing numbers, push back the Americans 
to the river's brink, where, as none of the poltroons 
gathered on the American side had courage to even 
bring boats for their escape, they were forced to sur- 
render. In the engagement, once won by the Ameri- 
cans, ninety of the invaders were killed and about nine 
hundred surrendered. Of the latter it is recorded that 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 207 

fully 350 were skulkers and cowards who had kept 
carefully aloof from the actual fight. 

The disaster was complete. Van Renssalaer, who 
had borne himself bravely, resigned in wrath at the 
poltroonery of his troops. He was succeeded by Gen- 
eral Alexander Smyth, of the regular army. Smyth 
began at once a rapid fire of proclamations, and soon 
gathered a force of about 4,500 regulars and volunteers 
at Black Rock, about three miles down the river 
from Buffalo. Another invasion of Canad'a was 
planned, and amidst the volley of proclamations and 
orders by which it was preceded, Smyth betrayed his 
Irish ancestry by a " bull," which in his later disaster 
became famous. " The soldiers," he ordered, " will 
advance with shouts — and charge bayonets. The sol- 
diers will remain silent above all things," 

But slight rhetorical extravagances of this sort were 
the least of Smyth's blunders. A force of regulars and 
sailors having crossed the river and spiked the guns 
of the battery that commanded the crossing, the way 
was open for an invasion in force. The army there- 
fore began to embark. The soldiers were in high 
spirits, eager for the enterprise, but scarcely were they 
ready to push off when an aide galloped to the river's 
edge crying, " Fellow-soldiers, the expedition is given 
up." No explanation was given. The troops were 
ordered to camp, and broke out in bitter denunciation 
of Smyth, He heard a Canadian bugle blow and was 
afraid, said some. Others remembering that he had 
ridiculed Van Renssalaer for a mere militiaman said 
he was a " regular Van Bladder." In wrath he fixed 
another day for the invasion, and again countermanded 
the order after the troops were afloat. This time his 
life was in actual danger. To avoid assault he had his 
tent pitched in the centre of the camp of regulars. A 
militiaman shot at him on the street in Buffalo, and 



2o8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

General Porter, whom he had designated to command 
the Ill-fated expedition, challenged him to a duel in 
which neither was injured. In the end he retired to his 
estate In Virginia, leaving his army disorganized, muti- 
nous, and worthless for military service. 

At two points — Detroit and Buffalo — that invasion of 
Canada which Jefferson had cheerfully described as a 
" mere matter of marching," had thus failed, and had 
failed with ignominy and disgrace. One more step in 
the grand strategy planned by Congress remained to 
be taken — namely, the invasion of Canada by way of 
Lake George and the attack upon Montreal. This was 
to be undertaken under the direct command of General 
Dearborn — an officer whose repute at the moment must 
have been high if one may judge by the number of forts, 
towns, villages, and streets in the Mid'dle West which 
still bear his name. He had under his command at 
Albany some six thousand troops, and with some 
flourish he set out on his career of conquest. It was 
the middle of November but the lake was still clear of 
ice, and the way to Montreal was open. But when the 
Canadian border was reached, after a march of about 
twenty miles, the militia stood upon their constitutional 
rights, refused to leave the territory of the United 
States, and nothing remained but to ignominlously 
march them home again. Thus was rounded out a 
record of military Incompetence and disorder at which 
even so young and ill-organized a nation as the United 
States in 1812 might well blush. 

Indeed the shame of It made the Americans do more 
than blush. To mortification succeeded wrath. It 
was a boastful day and people, and the saying became 
current, as new armies were called for, that the sur- 
render of Hull had done more to help on the war than 
could the capture of ten thousand British regulars. It 
did for a time stimulate mightily the war spirit. All 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 209 

through the nation spread the call for volunteers to 
retake Detroit, and to guard the Northwest from In- 
dians. Every man in public life, everybody who hoped 
to be somebody, took up the cry. A young man, one 
Henry Clay, then little known but destined to great 
place in the politics of the young nation, travelled far 
and wide arousing the patriotic youths to enlist. " In- 
vincibles," " Tigers," " Irish Greens," and " Repub- 
lican Blues " organized, elected officers, and demanded 
arms and leadership. William Henry Harrison, hero 
of the battle of Tippecanoe, Governor of the Indiana 
Territory, and destined to become President of the 
United States and grandfather to a later president, was 
put in command of the troops which to the number of 
ten thousand gathered at Cincinnati. 

But all the patriotic zeal, all the military enthusiasm 
so generally manifested and so skilfully encouraged 
was destined to come to naught in the face of military 
famine. The men were there, but for them there 
were no shoes, mitts, blankets, or food. Guns were 
scarce and many of the rifles supplied were without 
flints. As clothing and munitions of war were slowly 
gathered at the central depots the lack of any transport 
service made their distribution slow and inefficient. 
First muddy roads, then frozen rivers, intervened. 
The troops became demoralized, and the lack of dis- 
cipline joined with the lack of supplies to create a gen- 
eral state of utter inefficiency. 

Detroit, which had been the objective of General 
Harrison's campaign, was never reached, but in the 
northwestern corner of Ohio, near the Michigan state 
line, and bordering upon Lake Erie, the Americans and 
the allied British and Indians clashed fiercely with re- 
sults generally disastrous to the former. In these bat- 
tles, and more especially In the massacres which fol- 
lowed them, the Indians acted with a savagery and 



2IO STORY OF OUR ARMY 

bloodthirstiness which was perhaps only to be expected 
of them, but which brought upon the British who em- 
ployed them and who did not discourage their bar- 
barities, the execration of the Americans. The foe- 
men confronted each other first at a point on the River 
Raisin, then called Frenchtown, but near the site of the 
present town of Monroe, Michigan. Here General 
Winchester, in command of a body of Kentucky troops 
and one regiment of United States regulars, attacked 
and drove out a British force without very serious loss 
on either side. The British, however, were in force 
at Maiden, about eighteen miles away, and before Gen- 
eral Harrison could get reenforcements to Winchester 
they fell upon the latter in overwhelming numbers. 
The American commander was largely to blame for 
the defeat and rout that followed, for despite the rep- 
resentations of his officers General Winchester had 
made no effort to fortify his camp and did not even 
throw out pickets, or have any patrol make the rounds. 
It was therefore merely a commonplace of war that 
General Proctor should have been able to surprise the 
American force and utterly defeat it. It was far from 
the ordinary practice in war, however, that there should 
have remained but twenty-seven Americans wounded 
to 397 killed. 

Rather more than half of the British force was com- 
posed of savages, and if any attempt had been made 
by their employers to correct or to repress the bar- 
barous instinct to torture and massacre which charac- 
terized the American aborigine, it did not appear in 
the carnage attending this battle. For when after a 
gallant resistance the Americans were put to flight, the 
Indians massed themselves in the woods and behind 
the walls bordering the roads and shot down the fugi- 
tives as they fled. All who fell were scalped. One party 
of twenty, commanded by a lieutenant surrendered, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 211 

but were hardly disarmed before they were massacred. 
Even in the midst of the rout and the slaughter one 
part of the American line, made up of Kentucky rifle- 
men who had won some slight shelter behind fences, 
kept up the fight and by their marksmanship Inflicted 
heavy loss upon the enemy. Of sixteen men who 
manned one of the enemy's guns thirteen were killed 
by these sharpshooters. General Proctor, who had 
General Winchester a prisoner at his headquarters, had 
no liking for this sort of fighting and prevailed upon 
his captive to order Colonel Madison, who commanded 
the Kentuckians, to surrender. The order, coming from 
one in captivity, even though a superior, had no force, 
but Madison, seeing the day irretrievably lost and rely- 
ing upon Proctor's assurance of protection against the 
savages, showed the white flag. In this surrender 384 
men laid down their arms. A British eye-witness de- 
scribed them as coatless in a bitter January, clad In 
cotton, with blankets wrapped about their loins, armed 
with tomahawks, axes, bowie-knives, and long Ken- 
tucky rifles. Wretched as their ill-clad and half-fed 
condition had been they were destined to a harder fate, 
for Proctor, Ignoring his promise of protection, moved 
away, leaving the prisoners unarmed and many of them 
wounded without any guard whatsoever. The Indians 
first began plundering the captives, then maddened with 
whiskey, set about a wholesale massacre in which 
the wounded were slain first, then the other prisoners 
as fast as they could be run down. All were scalped, 
and the ghastly trophies were common spectacles In 
the British camp where Proctor seems to have done 
nothing to indicate any reprobation of the massacre. 
Thus, with new disaster, opened the year 18 13. 
General Harrison heard the news at the Maumee River 
and filled with dread of the conquering Proctor, burned 
his stores and fled. At the same time Proctor, In equal 



212 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

dread of Harrison, was fleeing toward Canada with 
all possible speed. General Grant in his Memoirs 
says that one of the first and hardest lessons for 
him to learn in war was that if he was afraid of 
the enemy, the enemy was probably equally afraid of 
him, and a recognition of this fact would probably 
have saved many a commander from an ignominious 
retreat. Harrison, however, soon recovered himself 
and advancing again to the Maumee built at the rapids 
a strong fort, which he named Fort Meigs. To gar- 
rison it he had but five hundred men, many of them 
militia whose time was about to expire. But by energy 
and skilful pleading, the general managed to drum 
up about three hundred more men. Hardly had these 
reached the fort when the redoubtable Proctor with 
about one thousand whites, twelve hundred Indians led 
by the famous Tecumseh, and with plenty of cannon, 
laid seige to the fort. 

The operations that followed should have been 
wholly to the glory and triumph of the American arms. 
As a matter of fact, where they were not inconclusive, 
they were discreditable. Proctor invested the fort and 
had been bombarding it for four days when Brigadier- 
General Clay, of Kentucky, with about twelve hundred 
men, came up to the relief of Harrison. Hearing from 
afar of the conflict General Clay sent 850 of his best 
men in advance who fell upon the British, drove them 
from their batteries, and captured the guns which alone 
could seriously menace Fort Meigs. That was the 
time to crush Proctor altogether. He had, it is true, 
more than two thousand men, but of these 1,200 were 
Indians whose nature it was to vanish at the first re- 
verse. Had the defenders of the fort quickly joined 
with the newcomers and turned the captured guns on 
the enemy, Proctor might well have been annlhiliated. 
But Harrison remained quiescent behind his stockade, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 213 

while Proctor rallied his troops and attacked the re- 
lieving force. Over seven hundred of these were 
killed, wounded, or captured. Here, as on the earlier 
occasion. Proctor sullied his laurels with the crimson 
stain of massacre. His prisoners were confined in an 
old fort a little way down stream, where the Indians 
were permitted to murder them at will. An eye-wit- 
ness wrote, " The Indians were permitted to garnish 
the surrounding rampart, and to amuse themselves by 
loading and tiring at the crowd or at any particular 
individual. Those who preferred to inflict a still more 
cruel and savage death selected their victims, led them 
to the gateway, and there, under the eye of General 
Proctor, and in the presence of the whole British army, 
tomahawked and scalped them." It was not to British 
interference, if the records of the time are trustworthy, 
that the stoppage of the bloody work was due, but to 
an Indian, the chief Tecumseh himself, who is said to 
have made his way into the midst of the murderers, 
and buried his own tomahawk in the brain of one of 
them crying, " For shame! It is a disgrace to kill a 
defenceless prisoner." But the British did not further 
press their advantage and returned to Canada, leaving 
the American flag still waving over Fort Meigs. The 
affair had been creditable to neither belligerent. 

However, Proctor stayed but briefly in Canada. 
General Prevost, his superior officer, sent him word 
from Lower Canada that no more troops or supplies 
could be spared for him and that he must draw his 
rations from the Americans or starve. Accordingly, 
with about five thousand men, including a number of 
Indians, he reappeared before Fort Meigs. General 
Green Clay was behind the stockade, and as he refused 
to come out and fight a superior force in the open. 
Proctor looked about him for an easier victim. Not 
far away, where the Ohio town of Fremont now stands, 



214 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

was a post, a mere stockade mounting one gun and gar- 
risoned by 1 60 men. This looked to Proctor like a 
plum ripe for the picking, and by land and water he 
transported his troops in that direction. Harrison, 
with eight hundred militia ten miles away from Fort 
Stephenson, thought the place indefensible and ordered 
its commander to burn and abandon it. But that offi- 
cer, bearing the stout Irish name of Croghan, was a 
fighter. His father had been in the Continental army, 
he was himself a regular and veteran of Tippecanoe, 
and he had no intention of fleeing without a fight. 
" We are determined to maintain this place," he an- 
swered to Harrison, " and by Heaven we will." With 
which highly mutinous response he set about strength- 
ening his walls with bags of sand and, at some points, 
of flour, and loading his only gun with slugs masked 
it at a point which commanded the probable line of the 
enemy's attack. 

Proctor came up with his five thousand men and sum- 
moned Croghan to surrender. Being met with jeers 
and defiance he turned loose his four cannon against 
the fort for two days and nights and then, thinking the 
garrison unnerved by the bombardment, sent his troops 
forward to the assault. The British columns rushed upon 
the fort on three sides, while the Indians assailed it from 
the fourth side. Each of the storming parties was 
almost as large as the entire garrison, and there was 
some reason for the boastful confidence with which the 
British Colonel Short commanded his men to " scale 
the pickets and show the damned Yankee rascals no 
quarter." But as he gave the command Croghan's one 
gun blazed from its concealed position. It swept the 
ditch, cutting down nearly every man, including Colonel 
Short, who was soon waving his white handkerchief 
and begging himself for the quarter which he had 
ordered refused to his enemy. On the other sides of 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 215 

the fort well-directed musketry was equally effective in 
repulsing the assailants, and at nightfall General Proc- 
tor gathered up his dead and wounded and sailed away 
for Canada. Instead of replenishing his stock of mu- 
nitions of war he abandoned a very considerable quan- 
tity of stores in his precipitate flight. 

It is one of the curious episodes in American history 
that while Major Croghan was for a time made a 
national hero because of the gallantry of his action, he 
very quickly disappeared from the public eye, while 
General Harrison, who had ordered him to abandon 
the post and who, during the three days' action rested 
supine and seemingly terrified with eight hundred mili- 
tia only ten miles away, was afterward loaded with 
honors and elected President of the United States. 

After this battle the land forces of the United States 
in the Northwest remained inactive for some time. 
The government had been exerting itself to regain 
control of Lake Erie, and although the record of delay 
and blunders which preceded Perry's famous victory 
seems even now discreditable enough, the fleet was 
finally built, and Perry was able to send from Put-in- 
Bay the famous dispatch to General Harrison, " We 
have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two 
brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." Of the naval 
operations of the War of 18 12, glorious to the Ameri- 
can flag as they were, I will not speak in detail here.* 
But the success of Perry opened the way to the forces 
of the United States to regain the lost territory of 
Michigan with the exception of the post of Mackinac, 
which the British held until the end of the war. Gen- 
eral Harrison late in September reoccupied Detroit, 
and marched into Canada taking Maiden, whence 

* The story of Perry's victory and other actions of the naval war 
of 1812 is told in the companion volume to this, "The Story of 
Our Navy," by Willis J. Abbot. 



2i6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Proctor fled eastward, and garrisoning several Canadian 
points. After a hot pursuit Proctor was overtaken on 
the banks of the Thames River at a point then known 
as Moravian Town. The honor of leading the attack 
and sustaining the chief burden of the battle rested with 
Colonel Richard M. Johnson, and his Kentucky Regi- 
ment, who while Harrison hesitated, fell upon the 
enemy so fiercely that he carried all before him and 
swept away British and Indian alike in hopeless rout. 

Among the slain was the famous Indian chief, 
Tecumseh, and controversy raged long and loud over 
whose was the hand that dealt him the fatal blow. 
The Kentuckians always claimed the distinction for 
Colonel Johnson, and years after when he was a candi- 
date for vice-president, this deed was seriously cited 
as one of his " qualifications." Tecumseh's redmen 
had been savage fighters and cruel conquerors, but he 
had more than once set himself sternly against the in- 
fliction of barbarities on helpless prisoners; so it is with 
no sense of pride that an American will read that the 
Kentuckians finding his dead body cried aloud in rage, 
and cutting from the thighs long strips of skin, declared 
they would make razor strops of them, and keep them 
in memory of the Raisin River massacre. For that 
savage slaughter it would have been more to the pur- 
pose to blame the British General Proctor who, after 
his defeat at the Thames fled in his carriage, having 
the effrontery to send back a message to General Har- 
rison, bespeaking kindly treatment for the wounded 
and prisoners he had left behind. 

To Perry's victory alone is due the fact that the year 
1 8 13 closed with the United States forces again in 
possession of all the posts at the western end of Lake 
Erie that had been lost to them earlier in the year. 
At the eastern end of that lake and on Lake Ontario 
the plans of the Department of War had been defeated 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 217 

— largely through the jealousy of two rival generals, 
Hampton and Wilkinson, whose bickerings would have 
been ridiculous if they had not been fatal to military 
efficiency. 

The plan of campaign proposed by the War Depart- 
ment at the beginning of the year was the capture of 
Kingston and Fort Prescott, and an advance upon 
Montreal. So far from being carried out the plan was 
never seriously tested. On the 27th of April, General 
Dearborn with about seventeen hundred men crossed 
Lake Ontario and captured York, now Toronto. The 
exploit was not a difficult one, for the garrison num- 
bered but 650, and despite a good fight were forced to 
yield to overpowering numbers. More men of both 
sides were slain by the explosion, probably accidental, 
of the British magazine than in actual battle. Fifty- 
two Americans and about forty English soldiers were 
thus killed, among the Americans being the veteran 
General Zebulon M. Pike, who was in command of 
the expedition. Pike was at some distance from the 
scene of the explosion, seated in the woods and ques- 
tioning a prisoner when a hail of timber, stones, and 
earth fell about him, beating him down and inflicting 
mortal injuries. The British surrendering soon after, 
their ensign was brought to the dying general who, 
asking that it be folded and placed beneath his head, 
soon afterward expired. 

Out of this battle sprang a heated controversy which 
raged until after the war itself was ended. It was 
charged by the Americans that the British General 
Sheaffe exploded the magazine after the action had 
ceased and negotiations for the surrender were in prog- 
ress, and that therefore the sacrifice of life was both 
wanton and treacherous. Sheaffe denied the charge, 
though military authorities generally hold that he 
would have been justified in exploding the magazine 



2i8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

since the surrender had not been consummated. In 
retort, the British accused the Americans of violating 
the code of civilized warfare by burning the govern- 
ment buildings in the town. Those buildings were 
undoubtedly burned, but the American commander in- 
sisted that the torch was applied by irresponsible indi- 
viduals. At any rate they were burned, and tradition 
has it that it was because the soldiers were enraged by 
the discovery of a human scalp — thought to be that of 
an American — which had probably been taken by some 
Indian and sold to the British and was then hanging 
in the assembly chamber. The scalp and the speaker's 
mace were sent to Washington where the British found 
them, later in the war, when they, in turn, burned our 
government buildings. 

The raid on York, successful as it was, did not ad- 
vance in any degree the general strategic plan of wrest- 
ing control of the Lake Ontario and St, Lawrence 
route from the British. The next exploit of the 
Americans was more in accordance with that plan. 
About two miles above the mouth of the Niagara 
River on the Canadian side was the British post. Fort 
George. A considerable expedition was fitted out to 
attack this post by land and by water, among the sub- 
ordinate commanders being Winfield Scott, then a 
colonel of regulars and Oliver Hazard Perry, who had 
yet to spring into fame by his victory at Put-in-Bay. 
On the 27th of May the attack began with a heavy 
bombardment of the British works in which Fort 
Niagara, field batteries along the American bank of 
the river, and five vessels took part. Under cover of 
this fire, which well-nigh silenced the guns of the fort, 
the American landing parties landed on the shore of 
the lake, thus taking in the rear the British works which 
fronted on the river. They were gallantly received 
by some eight hundred or more British soldiers who, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 219 

posted at the top of a high bank, thrice beat back the 
American assailants led by Colonel Scott. In the end 
the pertinacity of the assailants prevailed, and the 
British fled toward the village of Newark while Scott 
pressed on to the fort, which he quickly entered, pulling 
down with his own hands the British flag. The fugi- 
tives had planned to repeat the tactics of York, and one 
magazine blew up just as the invaders entered the fort, 
while fuses laid to two others sputtered and hissed 
vengefully until Scott ground out the sparks under his 
heel. The day ended in complete rout for the British — 
it would, indeed, have witnessed the capture of the 
whole force of the enemy had not General Boyd, com- 
manding the American army, countermanded for some 
unknown reason Scott's orders for the pursuit of the 
fleeing foe. In this action the British lost 271, killed 
or wounded, and over 600 prisoners. The American 
loss did not exceed 153 men. 

Spluttering hostilities continued all along the Ni- 
agara frontier. In June, one Colonel Boerstler with 
540 regulars, was surrounded by a force of hostile 
Indians, half his number, and surrendered in a panic. 
The way to retreat was clear — for that matter, the 
way to fight was clearer — save for a British lieutenant 
with fourteen men, but Boerstler's fright so magni- 
fied this pigmy force that he surrendered with scarce 
the firing of a shot. Not long afterward the British, 
under command of General Prevost, made two attacks 
on Sackett's Harbor, but were beaten off in both in- 
stances. In the second attack, however, their success 
seemed so certain that the American oflicer in charge of 
the stores that had been gathered in this chief military 
post of the Great Lakes, set the torch to them and to a 
new vessel on the stocks as well. The ship was saved 
when the enemy retreated, but the stores were a total 
loss. In a later battle, fought at night at Burlington 



220 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Bay, the head of Lake Ontario, between the forces of 
the British, General Vincent, and the two Americans, 
Chandler and Winder, the two latter were captured 
by the enemy, and the British commander lost his way 
In the woods and wandered out of the field of action 
altogether. Though the loss was heavier on the Brit- 
ish side, the Americans were diverted from their 
purpose and beaten back so that the honor of victory, 
such as that might be, must be conceded to the British. 

In recounting these sieges, assaults, forays, and bat- 
tles, it is forced upon the attention that not one of 
them, not all the lives lost and blood shed had the 
slightest effect upon the progress of the war. The 
Americans harassed the British and the latter retali- 
ated in kind but the actual outcome of the quarrel was 
affected no more than it would have been by two mobs 
rioting along the border. So Inconclusive was It all 
that the long-suffering War Department removed 
General Dearborn from command, replacing him by 
Generals Wilkinson and Hampton. Of these the for- 
mer was technically the superior, but a long-standing 
feud between the two men made them refuse to cooper- 
ate In any way. The result was quite natural. Two 
disjointed and wholly futile expeditions were led 
against the enemy by the quarrelling generals, both 
were beaten back and the project of wresting control 
of the St. Lawrence from the British was ended for 
that year at least. Indeed it was abandoned for the 
war, and forever. 

The year 1813, the second year of the war, thus 
ended with no material advantage to either combatant. 
Along the shores of the Chesapeake, the British Ad- 
miral Cockburn had conducted a series of raids upon 
peaceful towns and villages that had brought much 
suffering and distress upon inoffensive people, but was 
hardly to be dignified by the name of war. The 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 221 

Americans had no forces on that ground of sufficient 
strength to offer serious resistance to the enemy. 
Havre de Grace, Norfolk, and Hampton were in turn 
raided, and the circumstances attending the sack of the 
last village were so barbarous as to put a permanent 
stain on the British record. It had been supposed 
that the days of the violation of women and the 
slaughter of little children by the troops of a civilized 
nation had long since passed away, but at Hampton 
the British were guilty of both. 

Farther south the American arms met with a greater 
measure of success. That was perhaps because the 
country was defended by pioneers used to the rifle, 
and now contending against their old foe, the Indians. 
In the campaigns in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, 
the enemy were almost wholly Indians, armed and set 
on the warpath by the British it was true, but fighting 
under their own chiefs and in their own fashion. It is 
a matter, however, of ghastly record that a reward of 
five dollars was offered for every scalp, whether of 
man, woman, or child, which these savages would 
bring to the British agency. The first considerable 
exploit of the savages was the capture of Fort Mims, 
a stockade about forty miles north of Mobile. Here 
had gathered a very considerable number of settlers 
with their families, alarmed by the signs of Indian 
activity in the neighborhood. A force of 175 militia 
had been sent by the government to defend the fort 
which, between refugees and soldiers, was sadly over- 
crowded. Rank carelessness led to a frightful dis- 
aster. Late in August two negro slaves came running 
into the fort, and reported that the woods nearby were 
full of Indians. There were in fact more than one 
thousand Creeks led by the famous Chief Weathers- 
ford in the vicinity, but as the regular scouts had failed 
to discover them, the negroes were not only disbe- 



222 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

lieved but severely flogged for lying. After adminis- 
tering this discipline, the defenders of the fort went 
to dinner, leaving the gates to the outer stockade wide 
open. The opportunity for which the savages had 
been waiting arrived, and shouting their warwhoop, 
they charged through the gates and began the 
slaughter of the unprepared garrison. A few of the 
latter shut themselves in the citadel and fought bravely 
and well until the Indians brought fire to their aid 
and destroyed this last place of refuge. The mas- 
sacre that followed was fiendish in all its details. Not 
a white person, man or woman, was left alive though 
many negroes were kept for slaves. In all more than 
four hundred were slain, with the studied and elabo- 
rate cruelty with which the American Indian put an 
end to hapless enemies in his power. 

The massacre at Fort Mims roused a part of the 
American population to whom Indian fighting had 
become a second nature. It brought, too, into the na- 
tional arena for the first time one of the most rugged 
figures in all American history. The state of Tennes- 
see, having called for 3,500 men to put down the 
Indians, gave the command of this force to Andrew 
Jackson, a fighter if ever there was one, as ready with 
the pistol in private affrays as he was dashing in the 
leadership of armed forces. Swiftly pushing into the 
territory of the hostile Creeks, he won an uninterrupted 
series of victories. At Tallusahatchee (now Jackson- 
ville, Florida), a fort was stormed and two hundred 
warriors slain. At Fort Talladega, three hundred 
braves fell, and Jackson, who was nothing if not thor- 
ough in his methods, raged mightily because two 
companies of militia showed the white feather and 
permitted some of the enemy to escape. On the Tal- 
lapoosa River, near where Montgomery now stands, 
villages were burned and more than two hundred 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 223 

warriors slain. Nearby was a great camp on what 
the Indian prophets had assured their people was holy 
ground, on which no white man could set foot and 
live. But General Claiborne attacked this sanctuary 
and slew the redskins mercilessly. So complete had 
been the surprise that the assailants found the Indians 
preparing for one of their religious ceremonies, with 
several captives of both sexes bound to stakes and the 
wood piled ready for the torch. It may be readily 
understood that this discovery did not make the Ameri- 
cans fight the less savagely. 

Jackson's war upon the Creeks did not close with 
the year 18 13, but was continued during the early 
months of the following year. It culminated with 
the battle of Horseshoe Bend in the Tallapoosa, where 
in a battle in which neither party asked nor granted 
quarter, the Americans slew 557 Indians. This finally 
destroyed the power of the Creeks. All of this war- 
fare, savage and bloody as it was, is related to the 
war with England only because the British armed the 
Indians and instigated them to take the warpath. 
General Jackson explained the situation clearly when, 
in a personal letter, he wrote: "While we fight the 
savage who makes war only because he delights in 
blood, and who has gotten his booty when he has 
scalped his victim, we are, through him, contending 
against an enemy of more inveterate character and 
deeper design. So far as my exertions can contribute, 
the purposes both of the savage and his instigator, 
shall be defeated." 

The last year of the war opened in a way not at 
all encouraging to the American cause. Though the 
navy on ocean and lakes had won such a series of vic- 
tories as to make the whole world recognize the arrival 
of a serious contestant to Great Britain on the high 
seas, the army, or what passed for one, had no laurels 



224 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

to display. Andrew Jackson was the only fighting 
man of the first grade that the war had thus far de- 
veloped and his victories had been won not over British 
regulars but over naked savages. True, the British 
had won none of our territory, their operations along 
the Atlantic coast having been confined to mere raids 
without any effort to hold the places captured. But 
the most serious fact confronting the Americans, as 
1 8 14 took its place in the calendar, was the end of 
the long Napoleonic wars in Europe and the conse- 
quent liberation of the whole British army and navy 
for the campaign against the United States. It is 
true that peace suggestions were in the air. Russia 
had offered to act as mediator. But the tone of Brit- 
ish public opinion was all against peace, and for 
making the audacious infant nation drain the very 
dregs of humiliation and defeat. 

Hostilities reopened on the line of the Niagara. 
By this time the American regulars were becoming 
seasoned to battle and though not successful at every 
point, did, however, give an excellent account of them- 
selves at Chippewa and.Lundy's Lane. In the former 
battle, American regulars were pitted against British 
regulars and won — much to the dismay of the Lon- 
don journalists who commented on the action. The 
forces were very nearly equal and an official historian 
of the army declares that never after this battle was 
a force of United States regulars beaten by foreign 
troops. This historian ignores the battle of the Lit- 
tle Big Horn in which Custer's troops were annihilated, 
but doubtless does not consider the Indians who in- 
flicted that crushing defeat as " troops." 

To the American pride, however, the great and 
crushing disaster of the final year of the war came in 
the capture of Washington by General Robert Ross 
in August, 1 8 14. Among the capitals of the world. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 225 

Washington is one of the most exposed to the attack 
of a foreign foe. Once past the capes at the entrance 
to Chesapeake Bay, an invading fleet has a ready 
waterway to the capital, direct by the Potomac, or to 
its immediate neighborhood by the Bay. Today, of 
course, great forts at the capes make entrance practi- 
cally impossible, but in 18 14, no such guardians had 
been established. Cockburn's raids upon the towns of 
the lower Chesapeake — Norfolk and Hampton — 
should have fairly warned Congress of the danger 
that menaced the capital, but there was nothing done 
to avert it. In July, 18 14, when had they but known 
it the war was nearly at an end, the urgency of the 
Governor of Maryland led Congress to call General 
Winder to the defence of the struggling new city. 
That officer's record had hardly been glorious, being 
confined to his defeat and capture by the enemy at 
Stony Creek. In that ill-fated action he was sur- 
prised, but the episode seemed to have taught him 
little, as he approached the defence of Washington 
with a languid indifference to anything that savored 
of energy, or military preparation. 

August 18, word came to Washington that the Brit- 
ish had landed at the mouth of the Patuxent about 
forty miles away. With about two thousand men 
General Winder marched out to meet them, but the 
meeting was seemingly not to his liking, for from a dis- 
tance he saw General Ross marching by on the road 
to Washington and made no effort to stop his advance. 
It is true that the Americans were outnumbered more 
than two to one, but the moment was one for taking des- 
perate chances, and at least the enemy might have been 
harassed by attacks upon his flank instead of being 
permitted to march unopposed upon the defenceless 
national capital. 

For that capital was utterly defenceless. Though 



226 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

intrusted with its defense, General Winder had erected 
not one single earthwork, had established not one for- 
tified camp. At Bladensburg, not far from the city, 
the townspeople, more energetic than the commander 
intrusted with the defence, had thrown up a hasty 
line of defence, and hither flocked Winder's men, the 
militia from districts round about, many citizens with 
hastily seized arms and Captain Barney with about 
four hundred sailors from a flotilla of gunboats which 
had been destroyed upon the approach of the British. 
The valor of these sailors offered the only redeeming 
feature of the American part in the Bladensburg battle. 
A curious and almost pathetic travesty upon a fight 
for the possession of a nation's capital was that. Mad- 
ison, the President, was there with Armstrong, secre- 
tary of war, Jones, secretary of the navy, and Rush, 
the attorney-general. Before the eyes of these civil 
dignitaries deployed, in review, the troops — 3,200 in 
all, of whom 1,000 were regulars. We know now 
that Ross looked on this array with some apprehension 
and was seriously considering retreat to his boats, when 
some act of Winder's convinced him that the Ameri- 
cans were more frightened than he. Winder, avoid- 
ing a battle, retreated to the navy yard at Washington, 
but the next day, hearing the British were marching 
for Bladensburg, rushed his troops, his volunteers, 
sailors, cabinet officers, the President, and a generally 
unclassified rabble of sightseers to that point. The scene 
must have been not unlike that of the day in 1861, 
when all official Washington trooped gaily over the 
Long Bridge to witness the battle of Bull Run — nor 
was the return of the sightseers in the two instances 
dissimilar. 

To call the brief tussle that occured a battle would 
be to dignify with the terms of real warfare a skirmish 
that was ignominious for the defeated and not par- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 227 

ticularly glorious for the victors. With seven thou- 
sand men General Winder possessed the superiority 
in numbers though most of those under his command 
were militiamen. He had the advantage, too, of posi- 
tion, for to reach his lines the British had to pass a 
narrow bridge, crossing a shallow stream, and advance 
up a very considerable slope at the crest of which the 
Americans were posted, well covered by timber and 
undergrowth. Yet at the second charge, the defen- 
ders of their nation's capital fled. The artillerymen 
fired but once when they were seized with panic, A 
regiment of Maryland riflemen, which led In the flight, 
was commanded by James Pinckney, who had but 
lately been United States Minister at the court of that 
very British monarch from whose troops he was now 
running away. It was before the days of the Amer- 
ican newspaper cartoon, else the caricatures of Presi- 
dent Madison, and members of his cabinet swept 
along with the panic-stricken mob would have added 
something to the vivacity of history. Execrations 
were heaped upon Madison as he was borne along, 
for he was looked upon as the author of the war, and 
that conflict, unpopular even in the Infrequent mo- 
ments of American success, was held no less than 
execrable in the hours of disaster. 

Gaily as though it were a summer day's picnic, the 
British pursued the fleeing rabble. They expected no 
resistance, and for a moment hung back and wavered 
when a sharp artillery fire fell upon them from a hill 
about a mile from the original battle ground. Here 
Captain Joshua Barney had posted himself with five 
naval guns, and a force of about four hundred sailors, 
supported on the flanks by some regulars and a regi- 
ment from Annapolis. Forgotten by his superiors, 
standing where he did only of his own initiative, Bar- 
ney put up the only semblance of a defence that Wash- 



228 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ington saw that day. But when the British, repulsed 
in an attack upon his front, endeavored to turn his 
flanks, the miHtia and the regulars in prompt succession 
ran away. Captain Barney was thrice wounded, and 
though lying beside one of his disabled guns, he strove 
to hold his men up to the defence, they could sustain 
the odds no longer and joined in the general retreat. 

Meantime the town toward which the mob of fugi- 
tives was rushing, was itself in a panic. The rattle 
of musketry, and the deeper boom of the cannon sound- 
ing ever nearer told the townsfolk that the advance 
of the British had not been stayed. The civilians were 
in a panic. Had not the British at Norfolk and 
Hampton burned, robbed, ravished, and violated? 
Plad not a dozen hamlets bordering the Chesapeake 
stories to tell of atrocities resembling those of the red 
men, but perpetrated in fact by the white soldiers of 
King George? Why should Washington expect any 
better handling? All the women, at least, must be 
sent away for fear of the fate most fearful to their 
sex. Valuables must be buried, dropped into wells, 
concealed in any way. The banks sent off their specie. 
Government clerks packed state papers, and docu- 
ments into wagons and sent them over into Virginia. 
Mrs. Madison, the " Dolly " Madison of American 
social chronicles, filled three carriages with cabinet 
papers, and by a sudden happy thought cut the Stuart 
portrait of Washington from its frame on the White 
House walls and sent it to a place of concealment. 
Then she met her husband coming in haggard from 
the Bladensburg field, and with him she looked for 
safety a few miles from the capital. It is a matter 
of unpleasant record that American boors showed to 
the President and his wife almost as much indignity 
as the British could have; for coming in the dark and 
storming night to a small tavern, they found it crowded 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 229 

with refugees who cursed Madison as the author of 
all their woes and barred the doors. Later they re- 
lented sufficiently to admit Mrs. Madison, but the 
President was compelled to take shelter in a hovel 
in the woods while the British harried the country-side 
in search of him. 

The treatment of Washington by the British little 
belied the reputation Cockburn had earned along the 
Chesapeake. Entering the town from the southeast, 
following about the line of Pennsylvania Avenue, the 
invaders came first upon the Capitol, then bearing little 
resemblance to the stately structure of today. A pic- 
turesque tradition describes Cockburn as having seated 
himself in the Speaker's chair, organized a body of his 
hilarious followers into some semblance of a House, 
and put the question, " Shall this cradle of Yankee 
democracy be burned? " The tradition is of but doubt- 
ful authenticity, but the Capitol was burned to its 
four walls with all the documents it contained. 
Sweeping down Pennsylvania Avenue, the enemy 
gained the White House, which was also speedily In 
flames. Except sentimentally it was no wanton nor 
very expensive sacrifice. The Executive mansion of that 
day was a commonplace edifice, without the porches, 
the wings, the lawns, and parterres, and the stately 
old trees that now give it dignity. Only a few of its 
rooms were furnished, and the East Room, now its 
social centre, was commonly used for a laundry. But 
the British soldiers found great sport In burning the 
" palace of the Yankee King," even though they did 
not find, as many accounts have untruthfully declared, 
an Interrupted state dinner all prepared, joints In the 
oven, wine cooling, plates heating and all ready for 
the guests who had fled. The story has lasted long 
in the face of the fact that for twenty-four hours be- 
fore the British raided the White House, its staff, in 



n 



230 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

common with all Washington, was in a state of panic, 
thinking only of how to escape from the impending 
peril. 

The destruction of the public buildings at Washing- 
ton has been the cause of much acrimonious writing 
by Americans. The British General Ross excused it 
by pointing to the action of the American troops who 
but a few weeks earlier had burned the public build- 
ings at York, Canada. Perhaps it was a rather 
rigorous application of the sternest and harshest 
powers of the conqueror, but one can hardly but feel 
that too much fuss has been raised over it in American 
historical writing. It is quite probable that the earli- 
est and noisiest outcry over the barbarities of the 
invaders came from those to whose neglect the dis- 
aster was due. General Ross and Admiral Cockburn 
do not, perhaps, shine as enlightened conquerors. It 
is true, but in our horror at their lack of reverence for 
national shrines that were less than fifteen years old, 
we need not forget the fatuity of General Winder, 
charged with the defence of the capital, who never 
built a fort, or laid out an intrenched camp. Cock- 
burn it would appear, was a lively spirit as well as a 
good fighter. "Smash up the C's, boys!" he cried, 
presiding over the wreck of the office of the Intelli- 
gencer newspaper, whose editor had denounced him 
with patriotic vigor. " Be sure the C's are all de- 
stroyed, so the rascals cannot any longer abuse my 
name! " Are there no men of public note today who 
would like a similar chance at the composing rooms of 
some modern American newspapers? 

Having thus administered to the Americans what 
they doubtedless thought a well-merited and severe 
chastisement for presuming to make war upon Great 
Britain, the British departed, leaving Washington 
humbled and wrathful. But, had they only known it, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 231 

this easily won victory was destined to be the last 
triumph for their arms in the War of 18 12. They 
planned to capture Baltimore, after crushing Washing- 
ton, and turned their steps thither, while the fleet ac- 
companied them up Chesapeake Bay. There were 
more than 13,000 American soldiers in Baltimore but 
blundering generalship strove to halt the British force 
of 5,000 with only 3,200 raw militia. They fought 
sturdily, and in the action the British General Ross 
was killed, but the field was won by the enemy. It 
was, however, but a barren victory. When the vic- 
tors strove to advance the next day, they found roads 
so vile and so obstructed, and opposing forts and in- 
trenchments so formidable, that they determined to 
wait and let the fleet silence the forts. But this, in 
an all-day bombardment, the fleet failed to do, and 
finding the water too shallow to permit the advance 
of his heavier ships, the admiral declared he could 
do no more. Straightway then the army abandoned 
its efforts, the soldiers were loaded upon the ships, 
and shortly thereafter sailed out through the capes of 
the Chesapeake. At their departure the people of 
that sorely harassed neighborhood rejoiced mightily, 
while New York and Philadelphia worried lest the 
British forces should come their way. But the fleet 
sailed straight for Halifax, while the troops a little 
later went to Jamaica. They were to land once again 
on American soil, and then to go down to defeat in 
the most sanguinary battle of the Republic's earlier 
days. 

The Gulf coast of the United States, at that time, 
seemed to offer every encouragement to an invader. 
Its population was of mixed nationalities. French in 
Louisiana, Spanish in Florida, with outlawed negro 
slaves and warlike Indians everywhere. There were 
pirates at Barataria, smugglers and freebooters in the 



232 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

lagoons and amidst the keys of the Florida peninsula. 
The English government planned to send an expedition 
to capture New Orleans, and rouse these turbulent 
elements to revolt against the growing power of the 
United States on the Gulf coast, even in the territory 
that nominally belonged to Spain. When General 
Ross was slain before Baltimore, his commission for 
this service was on its way to him. After his death, 
however, command of the expedition was given to Sir 
Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of 
Wellington and a veteran of the Napoleonic wars. 
In November, 1814, this officer had within striking 
distance of New Orleans a combined military and 
naval expedition such as England had seldom sent out 
against any foe. Fifty ships of the English navy were 
commanded and manned by men who had been with 
Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, and bore on their 
shining decks soldiers who had followed Wellington 
in the Peninsula. It was a great armada for conquest, 
and it bore as well the civil officers who were designed 
to govern the country when it was subjugated. For 
this was to be no mere raid, no expedition to harass 
the enemy. It was England in her old role of land 
robber, and it was intended to permanently hold New 
Orleans and shut the United States off from the Gulf 
and free navigation of the Mississippi. 

While this expedition was in process of organiza- 
tion, the whole coast which it was designed to conquer 
was ablaze with a savage war in which Jackson with an 
army of Tennesseeans was fighting Creek Indians, 
Spaniards, renegade Americans, runaway slaves, Brit- 
ish secret agents, West India smugglers, privateers- 
men, pirates, and even the regular forces of Great 
Britain, for a major with a force of marines, had had 
the effrontery to seize the Spanish town of Pensacola 
and make it the base for conducting intrigues against 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 233 

the neighboring governments of Louisiana and Ken- 
tucky. With this fighting, which was sharp enough 
if rather irregular, and which drove Spain from the 
mainland of North America, we need not deal at 
length here and now. Enough to say that the British 
failed utterly in their efforts to make of these lawless 
and ill-assorted elements serviceable allies to their own 
cause. Even the pirates of Barataria, the doughty 
buccaneers who followed the banner of Lafitte and 
had their stronghold in the marshes and bayous of the 
Louisiana delta, repulsed the British overtures and 
turned their guns on the British invaders. 

Early in December, the lawless elements along the 
Gulf coast, east of New Orleans, had been so generally 
subjugated that Jackson felt safe in leaving that field 
to others, and going himself to the defence of New 
Orleans. It was high time. Indeed, except for the 
phenomenal energy, the unwearying vigor with which 
he pushed the preparations for defence, the British 
would have found an unprepared city, an easy prize, 
and the name of Jackson, instead of being identified 
with one of our greatest victories over a foreign foe, 
would have been a synonym for costly delay. He 
risked much and the government and people of Louisi- 
ana were equally negligent. The British fleet was off 
the coast of Cuba before any steps had been taken for 
the defence of the city. Indeed the enemy had made 
a landing at Chandeleur Island, near the mouth of 
Lake Borgne, and had demolished a small flotilla of 
gunboats posted to defend that route to New Orleans 
before any real activity began among the defenders of 
the city. Then Jackson woke up and once roused to 
action, he was a man to compel obedience, admiration, 
respect, and loyalty. His couriers flew in every direc- 
tion bearing orders that cracked like a whip. Fort 
St. Philip, near the passes of the Mississippi must hold 



234 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

out while there was a gun left and a man to point it. 
General Coffee, with two thousand men near Baton 
Rouge, was called to make forced marches to the men- 
aced city. General Winchester was put upon his 
guard at Mobile. Volunteers came trooping in — fish- 
ermen and hunters from the bayous and marshes, 
sailors from the Gulf, from Grande Terre caTne mem- 
bers of Lafitte's scattered band of pirates headed by 
Dominique You, as gallant a fighter as he was a rapa- 
cious thief. In the city was a sorely mixed population 
of Frenchmen, Spaniards, Creoles, quadroons, all 
nationalities and divers mixtures. It was no part of 
Jackson's plan to let them sit idly back while others 
fought in their defence. " Every man who fails to 
take a gun and report for duty," he proclaimed, " will 
be looked upon as an enemy and treated accordingly." 
And when some who looked askance on the rough 
life of the camp, talked of the writ of habeas 
corpus, the general promptly put the city under 
martial law and ran it without interference from the 
courts. 

Meantime the British were landing from their ships 
on the shore of Lake Borgne. The obvious way to 
New Orleans was up the Mississippi from its mouth, 
but the current was swift, and the way blocked by Fort 
St. Philip. Accordingly the invaders planned to ap- 
proach the city through the shallow lakes opening off 
the Gulf, and the bayous with which that water-logged 
coast is fairly honeycombed. By this line of approach, 
two English officers made their way to the Villere 
plantation only six miles from New Orleans and re- 
turning, guided thither some sixteen hundred men. 
The plantation house was seized, its occupants made 
prisoners lest a warning be sent to the threatened town, 
and word sent back to the British camp to hurry for- 
ward all available troops. The outpost was but six 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 235 

miles from the city, and no fortification of any kind 
barred the pathway thither. 

That was a critical moment for the greatest South- 
ern city of the Union — a city which indeed promised 
then to be the greatest in the Union and would have 
fulfilled that promise had not railroads supplanted 
rivers as avenues of commerce. The British were 
massing before its undefended streets an army of vet- 
erans, men who had made the weary marches of the 
Iberian Peninsula, and withstood the fierce assaults of 
the Napoleonic legions. Most fortunately for New 
Orleans, Major Villere managed to elude his guards 
and, making his way through the night, reached Jack- 
son's headquarters and gave the alarm. Then the 
tocsin rang out from the great bell of the Cathedral, 
drums beat on every hand and into the Place d'Armes 
— the " Jackson Square " of modern New Orleans — 
poured the motley throng of fighting men. Swiftly 
they were put on the march for the Villere plantation, 
and there by mid-afternoon of the 24th of December, 
18 14, they surprised the enemy in a fog so thick that 
in the hand-to-hand fighting which occurred friend 
could hardly be told from foe. The armed vessel 
" Carolina " dropped down the river and with her guns 
took the enemy in flank. As a battle it was satisfying 
— a sort not often to be seen again, for all weapons 
from fists and knives up to artillery were employed in 
the melee. The fight was inconclusive, though the 
British were driven back. Its chief value was upon the 
morale of the American troops who learned by it that 
even veterans of the Peninsula could be made to run 
away. 

Straightway after the conflict, Jackson arranged his 
army on the neighboring plain of Chalmette, in a 
straight line reaching from the river to the neighbor- 
ing cypress swamp with a shallow canal before It. The 



236 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

redoubt was mainly of earthwork, though the favorite 
fiction of cotton bales playing a part in its construc- 
tion has some slight foundation in fact. But the few 
bales thus used proved so inflammable that they were 
quickly thrown aside. The line of men back of the 
breastworks presented a curious motley appearance. 
Lanky Tennesseeans in coon-skin hats stood side by 
side with debonair Creoles handling the carabines of 
Old France. A group of sailors from the " Carolina " 
which the British had destroyed with red-hot shot, 
served a small battery of ship's guns, while a group 
of swarthy pirates from Barataria, commanded by 
Dominique You, served two 24's. Free negroes fought 
side by side with gaily attired New Orleans militiamen, 
who in the days of peace looked upon them with con- 
tempt and scorn. There were Frenchmen there who 
had fought with the Little Corporal and were not 
sorry to train a gun again on the Redcoats. Motley 
the line may have been, contemptible perhaps in the 
eyes of a trained soldier who demanded perfectly 
drilled and equipped battalions. But the men behind 
that redoubt could shoot, knew no fear and were quite 
aware that they stood at a crisis in their country's 
history. 

For more than a week the foes confronted each 
other, Pakenham hurrying forward additional troops 
until he had six thousand seasoned veterans on the 
field. His lines lay in the midst of rich sugar plan- 
tations, and as the Americans experimented with cotton 
bales for breastworks, he tried hogsheads of sugar 
with similar ill-success. Sand and sugar are not irrec- 
oncilable in groceries, but are not of equal value in 
fortifications. For more than a week there was a 
spluttering fight between the two foes, the most serious 
fighting being an artillery duel between batteries on 
opposite sides of the Mississippi River. The Ameri- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 237 

can battery on the west bank harassed the British 
severely, and to destroy it Pakenham had a canal dug 
and boats floated through from Lake Borgne to the 
river. The plan was to make the attack on the 7th of 
January, moving by both sides of the river simultane- 
ously. The British had carefully reconnoitred the 
ground in front of the American line, and were aware 
that a small canal or deep ditch had first to be crossed, 
then a high rampart to be rushed. To deal with the 
former they made fascines, or bundles of sugar-cane 
which the first line of attack was to throw into the 
ditch filling it to a level; the second line carried scaling 
ladders with which to overcome the redoubt. A point 
near the swamp end of the American line was chosen 
as the point of attack. An American deserter had 
told Pakenham that this was the weak spot in the 
American defence. This was true when he reported 
it, but after that it was manned by Kentucky and 
Tennessee riflemen— hunters whose chosen targets were 
the swift speeding deer or the leaping squirrel. To 
them a British soldier clad in the gaudy trappings of 
the day was a mark that could not be missed. From 
the point at which the British lines deployed into the 
open to the ditch was about four hundred yards — about 
a quarter of a mile of level plain to be crossed with no 
shadow of protection from the unerring rifles of the 
mountaineers who, safe behind breastworks, could take 
calm and unerring aim. In our day, with modern 
tactics the advance would have been made by widely 
separated men, uniformed inconspicuously, running 
forward a few score yards and dropping to earth, there 
to cover with a heavy fire a like rush of others behind 
them. But in 18 14, a battle was more of a pageant. 
The British were clad in scarlet, many wearing bear- 
skins, each breast crossed by white pipe clayed belts 
with a glittering buckle showing precisely the best 



238 STORYOFOURARMY 

point at which to aim. They advanced shoulder to 
shoulder in columns with sixty men to the front. There 
was no spot at which a ball could pass without pierc- 
ing its man. Of course they charged steadily and 
bravely. The British soldier has always been notable 
for dogged courage. But flesh and blood could not 
stand the withering fire that sprung from the Ameri- 
can earthworks. The assailants fell, they did not run. 
Like grass before the scythe of a mower, said an eye- 
witness, they went down. At last the whole line melted 
away without reaching the ditch for which it had 
started. The stragglers made their way back to shel- 
ter and the broad plain was left covered by spots and 
patches of red. 

Rallied and reformed they returned to the charge, 
this time at a run. They reached the ditch but by 
some blunder, the negro regiment bearing the fascines 
failed to reach there first and there was no way of 
crossing. In the face of this fatal blunder, the troops 
wavered, and in their gallant efforts to rally them, the 
officers paid a heavy toll of death. Pakenham, cheer- 
ing and waving his hat as he spurred on his horse, was 
struck by a cannon ball. General Gibbs fell within 
twenty yards of the redoubt. Colonel Dale of the 
Highlanders was slain, and his regiment, which 
went into the fight with more than nine hundred men, 
came out with only 140 alive and uninjured. Two 
officers only reached the crest of the American works. 
One fell instantly, riddled with bullets. The other 
boldly demanded the swords of two American officers 
who confronted him. They laughed, bade him look 
over his shoulder. He looked for the regiment he 
thought was at his back, but found his men had " van- 
ished as though the earth had opened and swallowed 
them up." The whole battle took twenty minutes, but 
for hours the next day, while the white flags waved 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 239 

over the opposing liiies the burial parties labored lay- 
ing away the British dead. Nearly seven hundred were 
buried including three generals, seven colonels, and 
seventy-five officers of lesser rank. In all some two 
thousand were killed, wounded, or captured. The 
American loss was seven killed and six wounded. 
Jackson had about 5,700 men in line of whom it is said 
" barely one-third fired a gun." 

For more than two weeks General Lambert, who 
had succeeded to the British command, lingered on the 
field. He made no further move against New Orleans 
nor did Jackson venture to attack him. The war 
indeed was over; had been officially ended before the 
sanguinary battle, for the treaty between the two na- 
tions had been signed at Ghent on Christmas Eve, 
18 14. But there were then no ocean cables, nor even 
ocean greyhounds to carry swiftly the news of peace, 
and it was long weeks before the intelligence reached 
the United States. Not until February 18 was the 
treaty approved by Congress and proclaimed the su- 
preme law of the land. 

The War of 18 12 called into action on the part of 
the United States 56,032 regulars and 471,622 militia 
and volunteers. Viewing these figures one is some- 
what appalled by the statement of General Upton, 
the official historian of the United States army that 
" the largest force of British regulars opposed to us 
was 16,500." But at the beginning of the war, most 
of our regulars were of little more service than the 
militia. Men are about alike, whether professional 
or amateur soldiers and the superior efficiency of the 
former grows only out of their greater experience in 
war. In 1812, the new regular regiments were no 
braver than the new militia regiments, but In the Civil 
War the long service made of the volunteers a fight- 
ing machine quite equal to the regular regiments, and 



240 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

by the time Appomattox came the two branches of 
the service were equally efficient. The great lesson 
of the War of 1812 was that a regular army, even 
though a small one, was essential to the national de- 
fence, and that the short periods of enlistment which 
resulted in the melting away of whole commands at 
critical moments were fairly suicidal. The lack of a 
regular army, too, resulted in a complete lack of prop- 
erly equipped general officers. Hence the disasters of 
the early days of the war under civil officials like Hull, 
Dearborn, and Wilkinson. It took nearly three years 
of fighting to produce leaders like Andrew Jackson 
and Winfield Scott. 

If the war had not been glorious — as was indeed the 
case save upon the ocean — it had at least not been 
burdensome upon the people. In contradistinction to the 
prodigious number of troops called out is the fact that 
at no time were there more than thirty thousand actually 
under arms and thus drawn away from the vocations 
of peace. In no battle were there engaged more than 
four thousand men. The total loss of the whole war 
— in land battles — is estimated at less than 1,600 killed 
and 3,500 wounded. Foreign trade it is true had been 
killed by the war, but the energies thus checked found 
outlet in domestic manufactures. The embargo was 
more effective than the highest protective tariff. The 
British raids along the sea-coast were harassing but had 
no effect on the general well-being of the country. 
Not a single town of any commercial importance was 
in the hands of the enemy for even a single day. And 
thus when peace opened once more the ocean highway 
to American ships, the store of produce ready for ex- 
port was prodigious and the rejoicings that attended 
the end of the war signalized as well the dawn of a 
new era of prosperity. 








m H 



J 

3 
o 

w 



CHAPTER X 

The War with Mexico — Strengthening the Regular Army — General 
Taylor in Mexico — Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la 
Palma — General Scott's Invasion — Capture of the City of 
Mexico. 

Shortly after the conclusion of the War of 1812 
Congress enacted a law for the establishment of the 
army in time of peace, fixing the whole number of 
men at ten thousand. Military historians criticise the 
law for defects in prescribing the form of organization 
of the forces, but at the same time recognize in it the 
first step after the creation of the United States to 
give the nation a true and a continuing army. Major- 
General Emory Upton, whose book. " The Military 
Policy of the United States " is the final authority upon 
the subject says of this law and its effects: 

" From this moment, wherever the Regular Army 
has met the enemy, the conduct of the officers and the 
men has merited and received the applause of their 
countrymen. It has rendered the country vastly more 
important service than by merely sustaining the national 
honor in battle. It has preserved and still preserves to us 
the military art; has formed the standard of discipline 
for the vast number of brave volunteers of our late 
wars, and while averting disaster and bloodshed, has 
furnished us with military commanders to lead armies 
of citizens whose exploits are now famous in the his- 
tory of the world." 

We are apt to think of the period between the end 
of the war with England in 181 5 and the outbreak with 
Mexico in 1845 ^s one of profound peace. But as a 
matter of fact, there was scarcely a year of that whole 

241 



242 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

era when some portion of the regular army was not 
in the field against the Indians, and the border warfare 
frequently took, on so serious a character that a call 
for volunteers was necessary. The Seminole War, 
the Black Hawk War, and the Florida War were the 
chief of these contests. The last began in 1835 with 
the massacre of about no officers and men of the 
regular army by the Seminole Indians in Florida, and 
lasted no less than seven years. Though the war was 
waged against an uncivilized enemy ill-equipped with 
arms or munitions of war, and numbering only about 
twelve hundred warriors in all, there were employed 
during the seven years no less than sixty thousand 
troops. This seemingly huge force to employ against 
so puny a foe, was made necessary by the short term 
of enlistments of volunteers and militia. The " three 
months' " regiments, had scarcely time to reach the 
theatre of war when their enlistments expired and 
they went gaily home as though from vacation. Gen- 
eral Winfield Scott, to whom the task of breaking up 
the Seminoles and moving their shattered remnants 
from Florida had been committed once incautiously 
expressed his confidence that he could speedily end the 
war with " three thousand troops, not volunteers." 
The nation, firm in the belief that a citizen soldiery 
was the ideal military defence of the nation rose in 
clamorous wrath. In vain did General Scott explain 
and excuse. Plaintively he wrote, " I am, of course, 
delivered over to the hostility of the whole body of 
the militia," and he foresaw clearly, for presently he 
was removed from his command. Yet when the war 
was ended it was made clear that had it been fought 
by a comparatively small body of trained regular 
troops the cost in years, money and in life would have 
been vastly less. 

Despite this fact, however. Congress followed the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 243 

close of the Florida War by an Immediate reduction 
of the regular army from 12,539 officers and men to 
8,613. Clear-sighted men could already dis- 
cern (1842) on the southwestern frontier another 
war-cloud gathering. The territory which came In 
time to be known as Texas was a part of Mexico, but 
fast filling up with immigrants from the North, men to 
whom the Latin-American Ideas of state and church 
were Intolerable. Their continued government by 
Mexico was Impossible, as impossible as it would be 
for the Americans now In Alaska to be governed by 
the native Aleuts. There was first outlawry in Texas, 
then organized revolt against Mexico, finally success- 
ful revolution and the creation of the Independent 
State of Texas. The Incorporation of that state with 
our Federal Union was as much a case of manifest des- 
tiny as the admission of Florida, but it gave to the 
Mexicans the gravest offence. They professed to see 
in the original revolt of the Texans the outcropping 
of an underhanded Intrigue of the United States seek- 
ing for more land. The resentment of the Mexicans 
was echoed by a large portion of our own people, who 
insisted that the admission of Texas was a scheme to 
strengthen the Southern states at the expense of the 
Northern commonwealths, and thus to bolster up the 
slave-holding power — for already the crusade against 
slavery was in full tide and current. 

I have no intention of discussing here the reasons for 
the Mexican War, nor shall I recount the bitter denun- 
ciations by the Whigs of the war that followed, who 
declared it a barbarous squandering of blood and treas- 
ure In an effort to force an unwilling people into our 
Union. Something of that feeling still exists, but one 
who will follow the course of the Rio Grande and 
compare the states of that Union on the north of it, 
with the provinces of Mexico on the south, will not 



244 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

doubt that the war with Mexico made in the end for 
civilization and the progress of mankind. 

While the question of the annexation of Texas was 
still in abeyance, General Zachary Taylor was ordered 
from New Orleans with four thousand men of the 
regular army and authority to call on the governors 
of adjacent states for more in case of need, to protect 
the frontier of the United States. He was directed 
to establish himself at some point on or near the Rio 
Grande, and was further instructed that any effort of 
the Mexicans to cross that stream in large nurnbers 
would be construed as an invasion of the United States 
and the beginning of hostilities. From time to time 
after General Taylor had taken up his first position 
at Corpus Christi, he was given more warlike orders 
and finally moved his army to Matamoras on the east 
bank of the Rio Grande. This was construed by the 
Mexicans as an invasion of their territory and a de- 
mand for his retirement was made upon General Tay- 
lor, who gave it no attention. Then, for a few days, 
two hostile armies confronted each other, within sight 
of the flags and sound of the drums. There could be 
no hope that out of such a situation anything but war 
could come, however strenuously the governments at 
Washington and the City of Mexico might strive to 
avert it. Come it did. Two American officers wan- 
dering out of lines were killed by the Mexicans. A 
force of twenty-five American dragoons, reconnoitring 
v/ithin territory claimed by Texas and Mexico were 
cut off and killed or captured. There was no longer 
any averting the conflict. Congress passed a bill de- 
claring that a state of war existed through the act 
of Mexico, called for 50,000 volunteers and appro- 
priated $10,000,000. This was in May, 1846. 

Viewed from a strictly military standpoint, the war 
with Mexico presents as unbroken a record of success 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 245 

as the War of 18 12 did of disaster. Palo Alto, Re- 
saca de la Palma, Monterey, Buena Vista, the siege 
and capture of Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, 
and Molino del Rey, form an unbroken list of victories. 
Yet the war was not popular during Its prosecution, 
and is spoken of apologetically In the histories of the 
period. The denunciations of it in Congress and in the 
press, the excoriations to which President Polk was 
subjected because of It, and the savage sectionalism 
manifested throughout the debate have affected public 
sentiment even to the present day. Yet no one who 
will painstakingly study the conditions existing along 
the border at the time of the outbreak of hostilities, 
will question that the war was inevitable, any more 
than one familiar with the present states of Texas, 
Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, will doubt 
that it was for the ultimate good of mankind. 

Hostilities once begun progressed rapidly. General 
Taylor had under his command an effective force of 
about 3,500 men. Four-fifths of his officers had been 
educated at West Point, and the little army had been 
continually drilling for the past six months In the 
camp at Corpus Chrlstl. Though he had called upon 
the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi for aid, 
the storm of battle burst before the volunteers could 
reach him and the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de 
la Palma were fought with his original force. 

While building a fort directly across the river from 
Matamoras, General Taylor received word that his 
base of supplies at Point Isabel, a few miles distant, 
was menaced by the Mexicans, With the greater part 
of his army he went thither, leaving a small detach- 
ment under command of Major Brown to hold the 
fort. The Mexicans attacked as soon as the American 
column was out of sight, but as they confined their 
attack to artillery and the fort possessed good bomb- 



246 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

proofs, little was accomplished. Before leaving, Gen- 
eral Taylor had told Major Brown that all he wanted 
was that the fort should be held, and that no matter 
how tempting an opening might be proffered by the 
enemy, the garrison must not be put in jeopardy by 
any sortie. Accordingly for six days, the fort sus- 
tained a heavy fire, replying but weakly as the powder 
of the defenders was low and they were not minded to 
waste it. Probably had the Mexicans known the state 
of affairs, they would have carried the fort by assault, 
but they contented themselves with repeated demands 
for a surrender, and a heavy bombardment which, 
though noisy, did but little damage. The garrison was 
wearying of the continued cannonade and the gallant 
Brown, exposing himself in a tour of inspection, had re- 
ceived a wound which turned out to be fatal, when the 
sound of guns other than those of the besiegers fell 
upon the ears of the besieged. They thought they 
were signal guns from Taylor, but they carried in fact 
a grimmer message, for that officer, returning from 
Point Isabel, had fallen in with the Mexicans on the 
field of Palo Alto. The enemy had the advantage 
of an intrenched position and, according to Taylor, of 
numbers as well — ^6,000 to his 2,300, he estimated. 
But he attacked them vigorously and drove them from 
the field, encamping his forces there for the night. 
The next day, following up his advantage with vigor, 
he found the foe strongly posted in a ravine crossing 
the road, and lined with picturesque palm trees — hence 
its name Resaca de la Palma, or Palma Ravine. Again 
the Americans attacked and were victorious after 
sharp fighting. In the two battles the Americans lost 
170 killed and wounded; the Mexicans about 1,000. 
General Arista fled across the Rio Grande and ulti- 
mately to Monterey. Taylor in a few days crossed to 
Matamoras and the actual invasion of Mexico had 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 247 

begun. Prior to this crossing, the fighting had been 
upon ground claimed by the United States as part of 
Texas, though the Mexicans sturdily denied this claim 
and declared that the invasion of their territory began 
when Taylor advanced to the bank of the Rio Grande. 

These three victories won at the very outset of the 
war encouraged the people of the United States 
greatly. More than that, they led to a revolution in 
Mexico by which the warlike President Parades was 
driven from the presidency, and General Santa Anna 
was recalled from exile and made President in his 
place. It was the theory of the Administration at 
Washington that Santa Anna was not unfavorably in- 
clined to the United States, though in the war which 
resulted in the independence of Texas, he had fought 
gallantly, even savagely against the Texans and his 
name had become synonymous with barbarity and mas- 
sacre. Nevertheless in his return to power, President 
Polk thought he saw an opportunity to negotiate for 
peace. But the overtures made were coldly referred 
to the Mexican Congress, which was not to meet for 
some months. For the United States there was then 
no choice save to prepare to push the war to the ut- 
most. Taylor's victories had fired the warlike spirit 
of the land, and volunteers when called for responded 
eagerly. Twenty-three thousand were soon under 
arms, and distributed along the Mexican frontier. 
The Army of the West, under General Kearny was to 
invade New Mexico, capture Santa Fe, and go on Into 
California. General Wool was given command of the 
Army of the Centre, which assembled at San Antonio 
and was to invade Chihuahua. Taylor's Army of 
Occupation already on the Mexican side of the Rio 
Grande, received most of the new soldiers. 

Taylor being already within the field of war, should 
have been the first to move. The Mexicans in his 



248 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

front were disorganized and demoralized, a thousand 
fleeing before a mere handful of United States dra- 
goons. One such pursuing party passed a hacienda from 
the gate of which a farmer shouted asking where they 
were going. " Trying to catch General Arista," was 
the response. "Catch him?" said the native in sur- 
prise. " Why his men told me that he had utterly 
destroyed the American army and that they were going 
to Mexico City with the tidings of victory." 

The Mexican demoralization, however, was not 
seized upon by the United States leaders as it should 
have been. Volunteers flocked fast to Matamoras, but 
they were of course raw and untrained and fit only for 
camps of instruction. Nor did supplies and means of 
transportation keep pace with the flood of new re- 
cruits. For three months General Taylor was occu- 
pied in perfecting his new army, and making it a 
dependable machine. But during those three months, 
the Mexicans were equally busy in fortifying and re- 
enforcing Monterey, which all foresaw must be the 
next point of attack on the south of the Rio Grande. 

Meanwhile the Army of the West was busy with 
an active campaign that had in it little bloodshed but 
was, perhaps, of all campaigns since the Revolution, 
the most fruitful of national good — for it gave to the 
United States New Mexico and the great empire 
known as California. It was not a large army to 
accomplish such great ends. Mustered at Fort Leav- 
enworth, Kansas, preparatory to setting out on its 
campaign, it numbered 1,658 men with 16 pieces of 
artillery. General Stephen W. Kearny, and Colonel 
Alexander W. Doniphan, his second in command, were 
destined to write their names large in the history of 
their country. In June, 1846, they set out over the 
plains on the long march to California. Kearny was in- 
structed to proceed through New Mexico, then a prov- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 249 

ince of Mexico and occupy Santa F'e, its ancient capital 
and a spot antedating in time of settlement many of the 
most populous cities of the United States. The 
march was arduous, across burning plains and sun- 
baked deserts, where water was scarce, muddy, and 
tainted with alkili. Every obstacle that nature could 
put in the way of the advancing column was interposed, 
but no human enemy appeared. Bands of Comanches 
rode up to the camp but only in friendship. Settlers 
and scouts reported Mexicans lurking in the distance 
but as their haunts were approached they vanished, 
even as did the cool blue lakes or the stately cities that 
the mirages painted on the burning sands of the desert. 
Santa Fe was occupied without a shot and with it the 
territory of New Mexico, 200,000 square miles with 
every variety of soil from sandy desert to fertile val- 
leys and lofty peaks were added to the domain of the 
United States by the mere hoisting of a flag and firing 
a salute. 

Meanwhile quite unknown to General Kearny, or 
for that matter, to the government at Washington, 
California was being won for the nation by wholly 
irregular forces under the command of Colonel John 
C. Fremont, who came to be known in the American 
political vocabulary as the "Pathfinder." In 1845, 
this officer, with a party of fifty or sixty men, was in 
California on an exploring expedition. His followers 
were not soldiers in the sense of being enlisted men 
of the army, but they submitted to a sort of quasi- 
discipline, acknowledged Fremont as their leader and 
could fight if necessary. The times in California were 
treacherous. It was still Mexican territory but was 
filling fast with Americans, and though war had not 
been declared with Mexico, the rumors of revolution 
after the Mexican fashion were general. Indeed 
these rumors had reached the ears of President Polk. 



250 STORY OFOUR ARMY 

That statesman was sincerely desirous of maintaining 
peace with Mexico. But he was even more desirous 
of adding California to the territory of the United 
States. Accordingly In dispatches to one Larkin, 
American consul at Monterey, California, and to 
Commodore Stockton who had two United States ves- 
sels of war on the Pacific coast, he Instructed them to 
make no overt move against Mexico but to encourage 
any possible revolutionary movement. Naturally 
enough, the revolt occured, and a handful of Callfor- 
nlans raised the banner of independence which became 
famous as the Bear Flag. Fremont, with his men, 
already under suspicion by the Mexican authorities, 
joined the revolutionists, and with them was on his way 
to attack the Mexican General Castro when the first 
tidings of the declaration of war with Mexico were re- 
ceived. Without more ado the Bear Flag was hauled 
down and the American Flag waved over the revo- 
lutionary army. All this was done without authority 
of any sort from Washington. Commodore Sloat, 
commanding the Pacific squadron, hearing of Fre- 
mont's activity and Inferring that an officer of the 
United States army would not embark on a career of 
conquest without orders from Washington, proceeded 
to capture Monterey, Sonoma and Sacramento, raising 
the Stars and Stripes above each place and taking pos- 
session in the name of the United States. But on 
effecting a juncture with Fremont, and learning that 
that oflicer had no official sanction for his proceedings, 
the Commodore became timid and set off for Washing- 
ton, turning over the command of his ships to the 
second in command. Commodore Stockton. Stock- 
ton had no such compunctions and joined with Fre- 
mont, landing his marines, and proclaiming himself 
Governor of California. 

So it happened that when General Kearny, after 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 251 

taking Sante Fe, undertook to carry out the rest of his 
orders by invading California, he was met early on his 
march by the famous scout, Kit Carson, with the news 
that the work was done, and that an American gov- 
ernor sat in Sacramento. The tidings were dishearten- 
ing enough to the leader who had expected himself to 
plant the American flag beyond the Sierras and to 
make the Pacific the western frontier of the Uinted 
States. However, he determined to continue his march, 
though like a good soldier he sent the major part of his 
dragoons back to join General Wool who was about 
to invade Chihuahua; for, thought Kearny, since Cali- 
ornia has already been subdued the place where troops 
will be the most needed will be along the Mexican 
border. 

As it turned out, however, he was premature in 
abandoning his hope of further military glory. Stock- 
ton, thinking California thoroughly subjugated ap- 
pointed Fremont governor in his stead and sailed away 
with his marines to attack the west coast of Mexico. 
The result proved among other things that it is some- 
times dangerous to teach people the art of revolution. 
The Californians who had revolted against Mexico 
and warmly welcomed Fremont's aid, became discon- 
tented when they saw that the officer and Stockton 
planned nothing less than their own immediate incor- 
poration into the United States. They had dreamed 
of a free and independent state of California, and as 
soon as the naval guns and marines had faded beyond 
the horizon they revolted again. Lieutenant Gilles- 
pie was driven out of San Pedro. The garrison at 
San Diego fled on a whaler to avoid capture. Lieu- 
tenant Talbot was forced to abandon Santa Barbara, 
and by the time word could be gotten to Stockton prac- 
tically the whole of Southern California was in revolt 
against both Mexico and the United States. 



252 STORY OFOUR ARMY 

For the moment Kearny regretted the dragoons he 
had sent back to Chihuahua, but he soon effected a 
junction with the forces of Stockton who had returned 
in haste from Mexico. In two slight skirmishes the 
insurgents were routed and the authority of the United 
States was reestablished over California without fur- 
ther serious fighting. It was a magnificent and a glori- 
ous empire to add to the nation — worth perhaps more 
than all the rest of Mexico. Yet the Mexicans, busy 
with the invading American troops along the Rio 
Grande gave but little attention to its defence. Per- 
haps they foresaw that the westward course of Ameri- 
can settlement made the loss of California to them 
inevitable and so let it go. At any rate no territory 
so rich and attractive was ever gained by a nation at 
so little cost of blood and treasure. 

The detachment of the Army of the West under 
Colonel Doniphan, who had been ordered to join with 
General Wool at Sonora, never effected that junction. 
The fault was Wool's, he having been delayed at Sal- 
tillo. But Doniphan's march was long celebrated in 
American military annals. One part of It was across 
ninety miles of sandy and waterless desert which the 
Mexicans had significantly named Jourada del Muerta, 
or the Journey of Death. With no water, nor any 
wood for campfires though the nights were bitter cold, 
the dragoons plodded along over the soft and drifting 
sand for three days. Hunger, thirst, and cold beset 
them, and they had hardly emerged from the desert 
when on Christmas day, a heavy force of the enemy, 
made up largely of cavalry fell upon them, displaying 
the black flag and crying, "No quarter!" Doni- 
phan's troops behaved with great gallantry. For an 
hour 500 Americans resisted the assaults of more 
than than 1,500 Mexicans, and when the assailants 
turned to flee it was with a loss of 75 killed and 145 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 253 

wounded. The Americans reported none killed and 
only eight or ten wounded. The blow was a stunning 
one to the enemy, and for some days thereafter on his 
march into Mexican territory the white flag, not the 
black one, greeted Doniphan as he approached towns 
and villages. El Paso was occupied without resist- 
ance, and an Immense quantity of munitions of war 
captured which Doniphan was later obliged to destroy, 
being unable to use or transport them. A few reen- 
forcements reached Doniphan at El Paso, though Gen- 
eral Wool was not heard from. With his augmented 
column, numbering little more than a thousand men, 
Doniphan took up the march to Chihuahua. Again 
the forces of nature were more cruel and more ob- 
stinate In their opposition than the forces of man. A 
desert of deep, soft sand sixty miles long had first to 
be crossed, and men and beasts suffered cruelly for lack 
of water. Many horses and mules had to be aban- 
doned to die slowly of exhaustion and thirst, and only 
kindly mutual aid helped the weaker soldiers to get 
out of the death's valley alive. For days the march 
was through deserts, and then around snow-encrusted 
mountain ppaks. At one point the whole command 
was exposed to destruction by a prairie fire, the flames 
of which leaped twenty feet high and threatened to 
engulf the artillery train with Its wagon-loads of ex- 
plosives. Overcoming this, as they had the other ob- 
stacles placed in their path by nature, the little army 
of Americans came at last, on the 28th of February, 
In sight of the river Sacramento where the Mexicans 
had established a great armed camp and were prepared 
to give them battle. Outnumbered four to one, Doni- 
phan hesitated not a moment, but attacked with such 
dash and gallantry that the Mexicans were routed and 
driven from their Intrenchments. Never did a con- 
fident foe suffer a ruder awakening. Amongst the 



254 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

spoils which fell into the hands of the victors were a 
great quantity of handcuffs which the Mexicans had pro- 
vided for the American prisoners they expected to take. 
The trenches were but eighteen miles from the city of 
Chihuahua, of which indeed they formed the main 
defence, and thousands of people had come out to 
vantage points on the neighboring hills whence they 
could witness the defeat and slaughter of the Ameri- 
cans. Instead, they witnessed the complete rout of their 
own army with 320 killed, 560 wounded, and 70 made 
prisoners. The Americans were fairly embarrassed by 
the prodigious quantity of spoil that fell into their 
hands, which included 50,000 sheep, 1,100 head of 
cattle, 100 mules, 25,000 pounds of ammunition, and 
10 cannon. Doniphan's official report gave one offi- 
cer killed and eleven men wounded, so slight a loss that 
it throws some doubt on the figures of losses attributed 
to the enemy. A few days later the Americans oc- 
cupied Chihuahua, a city of some twenty-five thousand 
inhabitants and at that time one of the most splendid, 
architecturally, of the smaller Mexican towns. There 
they remained until ordered back to the United States. 
Splendid as were the achievements of the Army of 
the West, and priceless as were its contributions to the 
territory of the nation, the real battle for the subjuga- 
tion of Mexico was fought by the Army of Occupation 
at first under General Taylor, later under General 
Scott. In that army there served in the capacity of 
subalterns young soldiers whose names in later years 
loomed large in the history of their country. Ulysses 
S. Grant was there and as also was his skilful and 
high-minded opponent, Robert E. Lee. Jefferson 
Davis fought bravely for the Stars and Stripes and the 
roster of regiments engaged at Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, 
and Churubusco bore many names that blazed with 
heroic fire in the Civil War. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 255 

While New Mexico and California were being won 
General Taylor rested quietly at Matamoras. There 
was trouble about supplies, and wagons for their trans- 
portation, but while the aimy and the country were 
impatient at the time, the delay was in fact advan- 
tageous, as it gave three months of drill in the instruc- 
tion camps to turn the raw levies of volunteers into 
something like an army. By August, 1846, the gen- 
eral was ready to move, and selected as his objective 
the city of Monterey. The delay that Taylor had 
used for drill the Mexicans had employed in fortify- 
ing this town which stood on the bank of the San Juan 
River and was completely surrounded by forts, two of 
which, bore the strangely contrasting names of The 
Bishop's Palace and El Diablo; however, there is 
nothing in names and the Bishop's Palace proved 
harder to take than the Devil. Besides its outlying 
defences the whole city was a fort, with its narrow 
streets and solid masonry houses. After the tropical 
style of architecture the stone walls of the houses rose 
three or four feet above the flat roofs, making of 
each house a miniature fortress. About ten thousand 
Mexicans defended the town and the forts by which it 
was surrounded. General Taylor had about six thou- 
sand men, having been compelled to leave an equal num- 
ber behind at Fort Brown for lack of wagons to trans- 
port the needed munitions. 

During its advance upon Monterey, consuming 
nearly a month, the American army met with no op- 
position. Mexican cavalry hovered about the front, 
but retired steadily and the army was within three miles 
of the city before it became apparent that at last the 
enemy intended to stand and fight. One of the first 
notes of defiance was a cannon-ball which struck within 
a few feet of General Taylor himself. That com- 
mander who had expressed the belief that the enemy 



256 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

would offer no resistance whatever, was moved by this 
incident to draw off somewhat and make plans for a 
hard-fought battle. And the fighting was desperate, 
as savage as in any battle of a war in which the Mexi- 
cans proved their mettle as good as that of any men 
who ever served a battery or breasted a bayonet charge. 
The citadel, or Black Fort as the Americans called it, 
a masonry work about 200 feet square, with a 
parapet 12 feet thick facing a 12-foot ditch, beat back 
Colonel Garland's command of Mississippians and 
Tennesseans with frightful slaughter, and withstood 
charge after charge. Once the Tennesseans led by 
Lieutenant Nixon leaped the ditch, scaled the wall, and 
turned the guns they captured upon the fleeing gar- 
rison. But the foothold thus gained was lost again 
and the citadel remained in the possession of the Mexi- 
cans until the whole army capitulated. El Diablo held 
out all of the first day and part of the second, spitting 
out grape-shot and rifle-balls at its assailants until the 
guns of the captured fortress El Tanerio were brought 
to bear upon it when its defenders fled. By roads cut 
through the fields of corn and cane the Americans 
converged upon the beleaguered town from every point 
save the side protected by the river. There was no 
question of the audacity of the attack nor the gallantry 
of the defence. In one charge a Tennessee regiment 
lost one hundred out of its three hundred men. The 
first day ended with some slight advantage to the 
Americans, but with the city still inviolate and the 
Mexican flag still flying defiantly over most of its de- 
fences. 

A bivouac in a driving rain, and a following day 
of rain with but desultory fighting did not add to the 
comfort or improve the temper of the warring forces. 
The dead lay unburied in the fields and trenches, and 
such of the wounded as were moved from the spots 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 257 

where they had fallen received their succor under fire, 
for the armistice proposed by the Americans for this 
purpose was refused by the Mexicans. The day there- 
after however, the 23rd of September, the fight was 
renewed with such vigor that the assailants were soon 
in the city. The Bishop's Palace was the last of the 
outlying defences to fall. General Worth had been 
directing the attack upon the city from the northwest; 
Taylor from the northeast, and for two days there 
had been no communication between the generals. 
Only by the noise and smoke of battle could either 
judge of the other's position. On the morning 
of the 23rd Colonel Jefferson Davis was ordered by 
Taylor into the city from his side. The advance was 
made with the utmost gallantry accompanied by skilful 
tactics, for as the narrow streets were made charnel- 
houses by riflemen on the roofs Davis broke through 
the walls of houses, posted his own men on the roofs 
and thus fairly tore his way through the buildings from 
street to street. Worth's men were fighting their way 
to the city's heart from the other side, and the Mexi- 
cans retreating from point to point were massed in the 
central plaza when night fell. Throughout the dark- 
ness the Americans worked bringing up guns, pushing 
forward troops, and making ready to make of the city's 
festal square a place of bloody carnage when day 
should break. But before morning came General 
Ampudia sent a flag to General Taylor asking for an 
armistice. 

The armistice was speedily agreed to, the terms be- 
ing so liberal on the part of the Americans that when 
the report reached Washington the President in a rage 
repudiated it, and sent orders to General Taylor to 
resume the offensive at once. But all the essentials 
of the agreement had by that time been fulfilled — 
the Mexicans had marched out, saluting their flag 



258 STORY OFOUR ARMY 

and carrying their arms, while seven weeks of the 
eight weeks' truce provided by the armistice had 
passed. 

Military authorities do not take so harsh a view of 
the terms agreed upon by General Taylor as did the 
President. In the battle the American losses were 
488 killed and wounded, or about one-tenth of the 
force engaged. No estimate of the Mexican loss was 
made. Promptly upon receipt of the orders from 
Washington, General Taylor renewed his advance, and 
entered Saltillo without opposition. General Wool 
meanwhile had marched with 2,400 men to a point 
called Parras, seventy miles from Saltillo. 

At this time a curious thing happened which might 
well have destroyed a great part of the American army 
in Mexico, and set back the course of the war several 
years. While Taylor was winning battles along the 
Rio Grande and in the northern tier of Mexican prov- 
inces the military authorities at Washington were de- 
bating the grand stroke of the war, the capture of the 
Mexican capital. There was discussion as to how it 
should be effected, whether from Tampico or Vera 
Cruz, seaports on the Gulf of Mexico which our navy 
could readily capture, and which would afford a base 
for an army marching upon the City of Mexico. The 
project of reenforcing Taylor and having him continue 
his march from Monterey southward to the capital 
was discussed, but wisely abandoned. Not quite so 
wise, and certainly not fair to this victorious general, 
was the determination to strip him of all his regular 
troops and most of his seasoned volunteers, to be given 
to General Winfield Scott for an expedition against 
Vera Cruz, and thence to Mexico City. 

Despatches to this effect were sent to Taylor. In- 
stead of reaching him they fell Into the hands of Santa 
Anna who hailed with natural glee the tidings that the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 259 

general who had been beating him in every battle was 
to be deprived of his best troops by the political author- 
ities in Washington. The Mexican general began at 
once preparations to avail himself of the opportunity 
thus offered, and Taylor, being in ignorance of the 
blow that President Polk was preparing to deal him, 
went on pushing his offensive operations in a way that 
fairly seemed to invite the attack of Santa Anna. 
Hearing that a naval force under Captain Perry had 
taken Tampico he resolved to occupy Victoria, the 
capital of a nearby Mexican province. Accordingly, 
he called into action the troops that had been left at 
Matamoras under General Patterson and was himself 
on the way from Monterey to meet them, when he 
heard that Santa Anna was about to attack General 
Worth at Saltillo. There was a time of swift chang- 
ing of plans, much countermarching, and seeming 
vacillation, but in the end Victoria was seized and 
there Taylor first heard the news of the stripping of 
his command. General Worth and 4,700 men were 
to be sent to Scott, and the men chosen included all 
but one thousand of his regulars and half his veteran 
volunteers. With a handful of trained soldiers and 
such raw recruits as he could gather he was left to 
hold a long line in the enemy's country already menaced 
by the Mexicans' most dashing general, Santa Anna 
and a force of twenty thousand men, mostly veterans. 
The order was brutally unfair and Taylor made 
a spirited protest, but proved his title to the affection- 
ate nickname his men had given him, " Old Rough and 
Ready," by preparing to do his best with the force 
left him. Many generals in such case would have 
resigned — and justifiably. Taylor stuck, fought, and 
won the battle of Buena Vista, and with it won the 
Presidency of the United States. 

After seeing the flower of his army march away 



2 6o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

to join Scott, Taylor returned to Monterey and went 
thence with his entire army of about five thousand men 
to a point called Agua Nueva, about twenty miles 
from Saitillo, where he established a camp of instruc- 
tion. Most of his men were sadly in need of drill, 
but the endeavor to make soldiers of them was rudely 
interrupted early in February, when at the news of 
the coming of Santa Anna Taylor fell back with his 
force to the pass of Angostura, a narrow defile in the 
mountains which he had previously selected as the spot 
at which he would fight the defensive battle on which 
he knew the fate of his army, and the future of all 
the successes won by the American army in that part 
of Mexico would depend. A hacienda, or large planta- 
tion near the spot was called Buena Vista, whence the 
battle afterward took its name. 

The Mexicans approached the day of battle with 
the utmost confidence. Santa Anna had with him 
twenty thousand men, well drilled and equipped, and 
for the most part veterans. General Taylor had 4,759 
men of whom but 517 were regulars. His artillery 
under the command of the regulars, Sherman, Wash- 
ington, and Bragg, had seen hard service and gave a 
gallant account of itself during the fight. But most 
of his troops were volunteers and their action on the 
field wins high plaudits from General Emory A. 
Upton, whose book, " The Military Policy of the 
United States," published by the government, is a plea 
for the regular soldier and a long, but judicial criticism 
of the record of the militia in our wars. 

Before opening battle Santa Anna with apparent 
good reason called on Taylor to surrender. " You 
are surrounded," wrote the Mexican chieftain on the 
morning of Washington's birthday, 1847, "by twenty 
thousand men, and cannot avoid being cut to pieces. 
I wish to save you this disaster, and summon you to 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 261 

surrender at discretion, and give you an hour to make 
up your mind." 

" Old Rough and Ready " rejected the hour prof- 
fered for reflection and sent word by the messenger 
who brought the summons, " I decHne acceding to 
your request." 

The battle was begun at dawn. The ground occu- 
pied by the Americans was rugged, cut up by gullies, 
flanked on one side by a deep ravine and commanded 
on the other by a considerable mountain, the slopes 
of which were held by the enemy. It was a field on 
which artillery could be of supreme service and the 
Americans were fortunate in having several batteries 
posted on ridges that commanded the line of the Mexi- 
can attack. But by their superior numbers the enemy, 
for the time, threatened to sweep the Americans away. 
They hotly attacked on each flank and on the centre, 
the attacking body in each instance being superior in 
numbers to the defenders. A large body of cavalry 
had been sent around to the rear of the American lines 
to cut off the retreat which Santa Anna confidently ex- 
pected would follow his assault. 

But the Mexican hopes were doomed to disappoint- 
ment. The first day's battle was largely an artillery 
duel with occasional clashes of bodies of infantry, but 
in it the American soldiers held their ground stub- 
bornly, beating back the rushes of the foe as a rock- 
bound coast repulses the crashing attacks of ocean 
breakers. One who will read together the stories of 
battles like those of King's Mountain and the Cowpens 
in the Revolution where the militia were appealed to 
to fire at least once before running away, and contrast 
them with the steadiness with which the volunteers at 
Buena Vista bore the shock of assault from a numeri- 
cally superior force, will see that a new type of fight- 
ing American had been developed. Night fell on the 



262 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

battle field without the Americans having been forced 
an Inch from the lines they had taken up, and through 
the long, cold, rainy hours before dawn the Mexican 
officers could be heard striving with eloquent appeals 
to nerve their men for even more dashing service on 
the morrow. 

Day had hardly broken when the forces of General 
Ampudia, the general who had been defeated at Resaca 
de la Palma, came pouring down the mountain-side to 
overwhelm the American left. Lieutenant O'Brien 
with a howitzer and two cannon held them in check 
with the aid of a heavy infantry fire. In the centre. 
General Moray Vlllamil was trying to force the pass 
of Angostura. On the right. General Lombardini 
and Pacheco were fighting their way upward to a 
plateau held by the American forces. O'Brien's fight 
was perhaps the most dashing service of a day of gal- 
lantry, for more than half an hour he held his ground 
against a force twenty-five times his strength. An In- 
diana regiment was ordered to his support, but through 
some misunderstanding of orders its colonel ordered 
a retreat. Others strove to rally and lead it forward. 
In the confusion that part of the field narrowly escaped 
being lost. Some of the Indlanlans rallied and were 
led with drum and fife to other commands. Others 
fled to Saltillo where they proclaimed the day was lost. 
In the melee O'Brien was obliged to withdraw his bat- 
tery leaving behind one gun for which he had not a 
man to serve or a horse to draw It. Pushing onward, 
the forces of the Mexicans carried the plateau and 
turned the American flank. At this moment General 
Taylor himself came up with May's dragoons and a 
regiment of Misslsslppians under Jefferson Davis. He 
formed a new line at right angles to the old, reformed 
the shattered commands that were crumbling away 
under the persistent attacks of the enemy. The Mexi- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 263 

cans were everywhere, sweeping down the hill-sides, 
trooping along through the gullies, charging across the 
plateau. Taylor pushed his artillery into more effec- 
tive positions. From ridges and foothills the guns 
roared. Bragg, Sherman, Washington, Thomas, Rey- 
nolds, Kilburn — veterans then and destined in later 
days to bear yet fiercer visitations of fire on battle fields 
of the Civil War — worked their guns, pouring grape 
and canister into the crowded lines of the foe. The 
Mexicans in their turn broke. A large column which 
had gone off to destroy the American wagon train 
near Buena Vista, was broken by the artillery and part 
exposed to capture by May's dragoons. At this mo- 
ment four Mexican officers were seen approaching 
with a white flag. Taylor instantly sent out the order 
to stop firing, and the attack on the menaced Mexican 
column was halted. When the flag-bearers came to 
deliver their message it was merely that General Santa 
Anna had sent to " ask General Taylor what he 
wanted ! " — a most extraordinary message and one not 
warranting the employment of a flag of truce. But 
as during the temporary cessation of hostilities the 
Mexican detachment which had been on the verge of 
capture had made its way to safety the purpose of the 
ruse was very apparent. 

Throughout the day the battle raged without mate- 
rial advantage to either combatant. The one moment 
that promised disaster to the Americans was when the 
failure of the Indiana regiment cost O'Brien his guns, 
and turned the American flank. But that disaster was 
promptly retrieved, and when night fell the Americans 
lay down again in their places expecting a renewal of 
the fight on the morrow. But dawn saw a field de- 
serted by the Mexicans save for their dead and 
wounded. Under cover of the night Santa Anna had 
stolen away with his great army leaving the handful 



264 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of Americans whom he had expected to cut to pieces 
in possession. He had lost nearly two thousand men, 
of whom 294 were prisoners. The American loss 
was 756, of which number 267 were killed and 456 
wounded. 

Santa Anna took his defeat hard. He had boasted 
much of what he would do when he found and gave 
battle to Taylor. Destruction of that general's army 
was the least part of his programme. He would sweep 
Mexico clear of Americans, retake New Mexico and 
even capture and sack New Orleans. He could hardly 
bring himself to acknowledge his defeat, but for a 
time sent out bulletins announcing his complete victory 
over " the Yankees." Some of these bulletins found 
their way to New Orleans where they were accepted 
as the truth and plunged the citizens into the gravest 
alarm. They reached Washington and the administra- 
tion was desperately defending itself against the just 
reproach of having stripped Taylor's army to favor 
Scott, and being thereby responsible for the slaughter 
of our country's sons, when the true tidings arrived. 
Then the nation went wild with joy. Cannon roared, 
bonfires blazed, and the political newspapers, after the 
manner of their kind to-day, seeing that Taylor had 
done one thing well, thought he could do all other 
things equally well, and clamored for his nomination 
to the presidency. 

He had indeed done well. Of the battle Colonel 
Matthew Forney Steele, lecturer before the United 
States Army Service School at Fort Leavenworth says: 

*' In all the annals of American warfare, no other 
such victory as that of Buena Vista can be pointed out. 
Upon ground unprepared for defence, with its left 
flank practically In the air, . . . this little body 
of well-trained volunteers successfully resisted from 
daylight until dark the assaults of an enemy of three 




Q a 
< ^ 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 265 

times its own strength; and at last repulsed him and 
kept the field." 

While General Taylor was thus winning battles for 
the nation and laurels for himself in northern Mexico 
the expedition for the capture of the City of Mexico, 
under command of General Winfield Scott, was well 
under way. The chief port of Mexico on the Gulf, 
and the seaport nearest to the City of Mexico is Vera 
Cruz. In 1847 this was a town of about twelve 
thousand which had been made into a powerful fortress 
by a line of entrenchments and redoubts which com- 
pletely surrounded it on the landward side, while 
towards the sea it was defended by the powerful castle 
of San Juan de Ulloa, built on an island about one 
thousand yards from shore, garrisoned by about one 
thousand troops and mounting heavy guns, many of 
them of the most modern type. But though fairly 
secure from attack, the city proved in no condition to 
withstand a siege. Scott's most serious opponent 
proved to be nature, for the spot chosen for landing 
the troops and artillery, about three miles south of 
the town, had but little protection from the sea. The 
troops, some twelve thousand in all; the two brigades 
of regulars commanded by Worth and Twiggs, the 
three brigades of volunteers by Patterson, a political 
general, were all landed on the morning of March 9. 
But to put ashore the artillery was a more difficult 
task. While it was in progress the troops were dig- 
ging intrenchments, and laying batteries for the in- 
vestment of the town. Late in the month the great 
guns opened fire. Only twelve days were needed to 
bring the defenders to terms. After the complete 
investment of the city, General Scott sent to General 
Morales, its defender, a demand for its surrender. 
He pointed out his cannon by land and sea bore di- 
rectly on the town and that a bombardment would 



266 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

be cruel in its effect upon non-combatants. The 
Mexican commander refused and the bombardment 
began. Its effect was terrific. Vera Cruz, like all 
Spanish-American towns was closely built and shells 
dropping in its narrow streets filled them with hurtling 
fragments of iron, blew in the fronts of the adjacent 
houses and spread death and wounds on every side. 
The houses were of masonry, but not stout enough to 
withstand the shells. Women and children were slain 
while praying at the altars of the churches, and at one 
place a shell burst through the roof of a hall in which 
a meeting was being held, and bursting, killed scores 
of people. The Mexican soldiers were brave, but this 
wanton slaughter of non-combattants was cruel to look 
upon. The consuls of foreign governments stationed 
in the city, sent a flag to General Scott pleading for 
a truce and the removal of persons of their nationality 
from the city, but as opportunity for this humane act 
had been offered by Scott before beginning the bom- 
bardment and refused, he now declined to stop his 
fire. The next day the city and the castle surrendered, 
the garrison marched out, laid down their arms, and 
were released on parole, and the gateway to the capital 
of Mexico was in the hands of the Americans. 

The post-road from Vera Cruz to the City of 
Mexico crosses a level plain of about thirty miles in 
width, then begins climbing through foot-hills and 
mountains to the elevated plateau on which stands the 
Mexican capital. No rivers crossed it. Much of the 
way it led through a fertile and well-settled country. 
The only natural obstacles in the way of the invaders 
were mountains, and narrow passes capable of easy 
defence. From the sea to the city was in round num- 
bers two hundred miles. 

Santa Anna after his defeat at Buena Vista had 
gathered up the fragments of his army and marched 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 267 

to Mexico City. There he found another revolution 
raging — for so strong was the fighting instinct in the 
Mexicans that throughout the war with the United 
States they were continually at war with each other. 
Santa Anna who, notwithstanding his reverses, enjoyed 
the confidence and even the idolatry of the Mexican 
people, managed to patch up the revolutionary quarrel 
and with an army of about twelve thousand men set 
out down the road to Vera Cruz, meaning to meet 
the " Yankees" in the mountain passes near Jalapa 
and block their advance, if, indeed he could not destroy 
them. The American army started meanwhile for the 
same point, and for a time it was a race between the 
two commands for the advantage of position, but the 
Mexicans won. 

When General Twiggs, in command of Scott's ad- 
vance reached the neighborhood of Jalapa, he found 
Santa Anna's army strongly posted on a number of 
hills past which the American army must go in order 
to reach its objective. The largest and most com- 
manding of these eminences was called Cerro Gordo 
(literally Fat Hill), and from it the battle which was 
fought took its name. For five days the Americans 
camped in the vicinity waiting until the entire army 
should come up. The Mexicans had every advantage 
of position. Nothing but the most determined fight- 
ing could dislodge them from their works. But that 
was precisely the kind of fighting which the Ameri- 
cans employed. For nearly three miles the road lead- 
ing up to Cerro Gordo was blocked and flanked by 
forts perched high upon the neighboring hills. Scott 
determined upon another road and set his men to cut- 
ting one, behind the hills, which would bring his troops 
out in Santa Anna's rear. The work was done secretly 
and was all but completed when the Mexicans discov- 
ered it. At once the division of General Twiggs was 



268 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

sent by this road to take the Mexicans in the rear, 
while the high hill, El Telegrafo, was captured by 
assault and its guns together with a number of fresh 
ones, which the Americans with painful labor had 
dragged to the crest of the hill, were turned upon the 
enemy. Under cover of this fire the American infantry 
charged up one after the other of the hills, until the 
Mexicans were driven from all save the tower-topped 
acclivity of Cerro Gordo itself. 

On the morning of the second day this hill in turn 
was assaulted, the Americans charged down the slope 
of El Telegrafo and up the steep of Cerro Gordo in 
the face of a savage fire. It was fighting to try the 
best and stoutest souls. The grade was steep, the 
ground rugged and covered with underbrush which im- 
peded the movements of the troops without giving 
them cover. Two breastworks crowned the hill blaz- 
ing with savage musketry. Both were taken at a rush, 
and as the Americans marched to the crest they saw 
a body of friends from Twiggs's division climbing up 
up the other side to take the enemy in the rear. 
Vasquez, the general commanding the Mexicans at 
this point, was killed with several other officers, and 
other generals were taken prisoners. Their troops 
fled in disorder toward Jalapa. At all points on the 
broken and irregular field the Americans were vic- 
torious, and the Mexicans in full flight. Santa Anna 
seeing that the day was lost, cut a mule loose from a 
stalled gun and galloped frantically away to safety, 
followed by about eight thousand men, the remnants 
of his army, with Harney's dragoons and the infantry 
of Worth and Twiggs in full pursuit. At mid-day it 
ceased to be a battle and became a rout, and from that 
time until night fell over the land the Americans were 
pursuing the enemy with relentless determination to 
annihilate that army. The Mexican disaster was com- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 269 

plete. Of the 12,000 men who had gone into battle 
3,000 were made prisoners, and 1,000 to 1,200 killed 
or wounded. Seven regimental standards, 43 pieces 
of artillery and 5,000 stand of arms were captured. 
The American losses were fixed officially at 33 officers 
and 398 enlisted men. Scott himself said that 
*' Mexico no longer had an army." 

The way to Mexico City was indeed open to the 
American general but just at that juncture an obstacle 
to military efficiency, familiar in each of our wars, 
presented itself. Most of the volunteers had been 
enlisted for twelve months. This period was drawing 
to a close and General Scott lost seven of his eleven 
regiments of volunteers. He was within three days' 
march of Mexico City but with his force reduced to 
5,820 he had no option save to remain on the de- 
fensive until reenforcements could reach him. Three 
months were thus idled away, the Washington authori- 
ties resuming their efforts to conclude a peace and 
being roundly snubbed for their pertinacity. Looking 
back upon this war, at a moment (1914) when new 
complications with Mexico are acute, it is well for 
Americans to take note of the tenacity with which in 
1847 the Mexicans clung to their ideal of national 
honor, and the determination with which they fought 
for its maintenance. 

Santa Anna, being a resourceful leader, though he 
had now been twice beaten in battles with the numeri- 
cal advantages and those of position altogether with 
him, was busy during these days of quiescence in gather- 
ing a new army. His infantry had been dispersed or 
captured, but his cavalry had escaped with him and 
this he made the nucleus about which to build up a 
new force. The Mexican heart was fired by proclama- 
tions eloquently denouncing the barbarity of the Yan- 
kee invaders, skilfully arousing national pride and 



270 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

promising dire vengeance upon those who had hum- 
bled the national banner. As proclamations alone 
would not do a law was passed making army service 
compulsory upon all males between the ages of sixteen 
and sixty. A guerilla warfare in the districts held 
by the Americans was further decreed with the watch- 
word, "War without pity unto death!" By these 
and other expedients Santa Anna succeeded in erect- 
ing upon the ruins of his old army a new force ap- 
proximating thirty thousand men. Convinced that 
the Americans would not stop short of Mexico City 
every road leading thither was heavily fortified. This 
was the easier task because over the overflow 
of the valley in which the city is placed at certain 
seasons of the year the roads are built in causeways 
with ditches on either side. A massed column of 
troops advancing along such a road affords a tempting 
target for artillery. 

By August, 1847, Scott's army had been increased 
to about 13,000 men of whom 3,000 were sick. It 
was encamped about 150 miles from Vera Cruz — a 
long line of communication which it was difficult to 
guard. Cutting loose, therefore, from his base, aban- 
doning his communications, leaving his sick and con- 
valescent in the camp at Puebla, General Scott ad- 
vanced with his ten thousand effectives on Mexico City. 
He was staking everything on victory. In defeat 
there would have been as little chance of retreat for 
him as in later years there was for Sherman when he 
burned Atlanta and started on his march to the sea. 

Marching swiftly, without opposition through a 
richly cultivated country the invaders found themselves 
on the fourth day on the slope of a mountain looking 
down upon the valley of Mexico. That is one of 
the world's fairest beauty spots. The level plain lying 
under a bright sky and with a climate nearly perfect 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 271 

and equable the year round, was clothed with the 
living green of fertile fields, lined with the silvery 
course of rushing waters, dotted with blue lakes and 
the white walls of villages and haciendas. The capital 
lay in the centre, fifteen miles from the spot from 
which General Twiggs's division, leading the advance, 
first looked down upon this lovely prospect. The 
country that looked so peaceful was, however, feverish 
with warlike activity. The villages and haciendas had 
been stripped of their men and boys to fill the ranks 
of Santa Anna's army, and to toil with pick and spade 
in the creation of breastworks to block the progress 
of the Yankee host. Every road was thus guarded. 
From the crest of El Penon, a hill utterly inaccessible 
on three sides, frowned a fortress composed of three 
tiers of batteries, mounting fifty guns and surrounded 
by a moat filled with water and ten feet deep. It com- 
pletely commanded the national road by which hereto- 
fore the Americans had advanced, and which was made 
unfit for further use by the fact that at this point it 
narrowed to a mere causeway bordered by marshes. 
Reconnoitring this position, General Scott abandoned 
all idea of storming it. After a careful study of the 
country he determined to approach the city from the 
south by the Acapulco road. The defences of this 
path were by no means contemptible. At Contreras, 
the first of the enemy's positions to be encountered, 22 
guns were mounted on a commanding hill and backed 
by 7,000 infantry under General Valencia. Santa 
Anna with 12,000 men was entrenched before the vil- 
lage of Contreras blocking the path between the hill 
and Churubusco. At the latter point General Rulcon 
with 7,000 troops held a position at the head of a 
bridge, and at San Antonio nearby was General Bravo 
with 3,000. Another road, which Scott considered for 
his approach but abandoned, was guarded by the for- 



272 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tresses of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec which in 
the end the Americans were forced to storm. 

On the 19th of May, the divisions of Pillow and 
Twiggs painfully cutting a road for themselves through 
the dense thickets of chapparal suddenly came into 
the open and discovered Valencia's lines scarcely two 
hundred yards away. The hill of Contreras there- 
upon became the Americans' first objective, and amid 
a general artillery fire and clashes of infantry the 
American forces worked their way forward during the 
day until by nightfall a great part of the army was 
massed in the village of Contreras, at the foot of the 
hill, and between the troops of Valencia and Santa 
Anna. The position was a precarious one, but during 
the night a path was found to the rear of Valencia 
and at dawn the Invaders stormed his camp, front and 
rear. The surprise of the Mexicans at being thus at- 
tacked was complete. Ignorant of the route to their 
rear they had prepared only for a frontal attack, and 
caught between two fires, broke and fled. Their 
losses by death and wounds were heavy, but so great 
was the number of prisoners taken that the Americans 
were embarrassed by the presence of their captives. 
Four generals, a small regiment of lesser ofl^cers, and 
a thousand men were taken, and among twenty-two 
cannons captured the Americans discovered to their 
joy the pieces taken by the Mexicans at the battle of 
Buena Vista. They were discovered in the heat of 
the battle, and it was with renewed zeal that the 
Americans, cheering wildly, loaded the recaptured guns 
to the muzzle and turned them upon the enemy. 

In this battle, known as the battle of Contreras, 
the Americans engaged numbered 4,500; the Mexicans 
4,000. Though the latter fought behind breastworks 
their loss in killed and wounded was 700 to the Ameri- 
can loss of less than 100. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 273 

Though Santa Anna's force was less than three 
miles away from the battle field he gave Valencia no 
assistance whatever. It appears that the assault was 
begun so early and pressed with such vigor, that by the 
time Santa Anna, hearing the noise of cannon, roused 
and formed his army to come to his lieutenant's aid, 
the troops of the latter were already routed, and the 
advancing reeforcements encountered the fleeing troops 
and fell back with them. Abandoning his attempt to 
save Valencia, Santa Anna thereupon fell back to Chu- 
rubusco where he halted to oppose once again the 
Americans' march to the national capital. 

At Churubusco was a massive stone building orig- 
inally a convent but which the Mexicans speedily con- 
verted into a powerful fort garrisoned by three thou- 
sand men. The front of their lines was covered by a 
bridge, at the entrance to which Santa Anna constructed 
a tete de pont, or fort guarding the bridge, while back 
of the river was his entire army with his reserves. 

The Americans, who had followed fast on the heels 
of the retreating Mexicans, halted at a crossroads vil- 
lage, called Coyoacan, to make their dispositions for 
attack. Here the army was broken into three parts. 
One under Generals Franklin Pierce, afterwards Presi- 
dent, and Shields, was sent to make a circuit and at- 
tack Santa Anna from the rear. General Pillow was 
to move on the enemy from the south. Twiggs, Riley, 
and Smith were to assault the convent in front. At 
all points along the line the fighting was desperate 
and bloody. The convent proved a stubborn nut to 
crack. A high stone wall pierced for musketry was 
reenforced at the corner of the square it formed by 
the stone convent wall, the windows of which blazed 
with rifle fire. Outside the wall were field works 
mounting ten cannon, and commanding the causeway 
by which alone it could be reached. On either side 



274 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of the causeway were spreading cornfields filled with 
lurking sharpshooters. The Americans pounded away 
at this citadel with artillery and musketry. Mean- 
while a few hundreds yards away the invaders were 
fighting hard to drive the Mexicans from the tete de 
pont, and cross the bridge. For a time it seemed that 
disaster menaced the American plan at this point. 
Santa Anna put into the defence of the bridge all his 
available men, and at one time, attacking the Ameri- 
cans in front and flank, had well-nigh cut the line of 
Pierce and Shields to pieces. The day at this point 
was saved by General Pillow, who, hearing the heavy 
firing, turned aside from his march upon San Antonio 
and took the Mexicans in flank. Once the Mexican 
resistance was broken the whole went to pieces like a 
house of cards. The tete de pont abandoned, its guns 
were turned upon the convent, which though it stood 
out for two hours after the rest of the Mexican army 
was in full retreat, finally succumbed. Its garrison 
joined the disorganized remains of Santa Anna's army 
streaming down the narrow road and across the cause- 
ways to Mexico City. 

Had Scott ordered a general pursuit his army might 
that night have been in the City of Mexico, and the 
war ended without further bloodshed. Indeed some 
parties of Americans did press the pursuit to the very 
walls but were too few in number to force their way 
through. At this point, however, civilian and political 
influence interfered to stay the military arm. Through- 
out the war President Polk had been obsessed by the 
idea that the Mexicans might at any moment accept 
propositions for peace. Though repeatedly rebufi^ed 
he clung to this delusion and even sent with the army 
an oflicial of the State Department named Trist with 
authority to negotiate for peace at any time, and to 
halt the military campaign while such negotiations 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 275 

were in progress. General Scott, at first bitterly pro- 
tested against the Trist appointment and autho- 
rity, but in time became reconciled to it, and even con- 
ceived for the pacificator a great personal friendship. 
They both were convinced by officious persons that 
if the successes of Churubusco and Contreras were 
not too savagely pushed a peace might be negotiated. 
Accordingly the pursuit was called off, and when the 
time again came to actually march into Mexico City 
some hundreds of American lives were lost in winning 
what after the battle of Contreras was to be had for 
the taking. 

The battle, the fruits of which were thus supinely 
sacrificed, had been fiercely fought. Nine thousand 
American soldiers had attacked and driven from these 
fortified positions 27,000 Mexicans. Of the enemy 
3,250 were killed or wounded and 2,627 made prison- 
ers, including more than 200 officers. Sixteen officers 
and 120 men were killed under the Stars and Stripes, 
and 60 officers and 816 men were wounded. Among 
the troops captured in the convent were what were 
called the " Patricio companies " ; commands composed 
of deserters — mostly Irishmen — from the United 
States army. Fifty of these were hanged in one execu- 
tion. After the battle an armistice was declared and 
peace commissioners appointed. But again the Mexi- 
cans merely trifled with the peace proposals, and find- 
ing that they were taking advantage of the cessation 
of hostilities to strengthen their defences and recruit 
their army. General Scott abruptly opened operations 
again, September 6. 

Eight causeways raised about six feet above the sur- 
rounding marshes, at that time gave entrance to Mexico 
City. All were fortified but the two by which General 
Scott chose to advance upon the city were particularly 
well defended, being commanded by the formidable 



276 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

works of Molino del Rey, Casa de Mata, and the 
Castle of Chapultepec. There has been some military 
criticism of Scott's choice of roads, many officers of the 
time and later students believing that he could have 
avoided the storming of Chapuletepec and the conse- 
quent heavy loss of life by following other roads. 
But in war success counts and success Scott won. The 
Castle of Chapultepec is to-day the most impressive 
feature of the City of Mexico. The penetrating and 
battering power of modern ordnance have ended 
forever its value as a fortress, but in 1847 it was a 
formidable defence. The massive stone edifice, once 
a bishop's palace that crowns the precipitious hill, was 
made into a strong fortress heavily armed and gar- 
risoned. The hill itself was 150 feet high, crowned 
with batteries and hedged about the base with earth- 
works. The whole hill was enclosed by a stone-wall 
at the western end of which were the stone buildings 
known as Molino del Rey. These buildings were used 
as a foundry, as well as a fort, and it was a report that 
the Mexicans were taking church bells thither and cast- 
ing them into cannon which roused Scott's ire and 
caused him to declare the terms of the armistice 
violated. Casa de Mata was another heavy stone 
edifice surrounded by earthwork, about a quarter of 
a mile from Molino del Rey, To the north was the 
aqueduct, still standing, the arches of which had been 
blocked up with masonry. The whole enclosure 
dominated by the castle was one great fort of masonry 
and earth. 

To General Worth was committed the task of driv- 
ing the enemy from Molino del Rey and the duty 
was performed with singular celerity. A storming 
party of but five hundred men dashed forward under 
cover of a heavy fire from the supporting batteries, 
and by sheer audacity drove the enemy from his guns. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 277 

Had there been a stronger force to hold the ground 
thus won heavy carnage would have been averted, but 
even In their rout the Mexicans discovered how slight 
was the force from which they fled, and rallying 
poured a heavy fire from housetops and walls until 
of fourteen commissioned officers in the forlorn hope 
eleven were struck down. While they wavered under 
the new attack support came to them and Molino del 
Rey was taken. Its guns were turned on the enemy's 
other defences and the victorious Americans soon after 
swept over the crest of the works at Casa de Mata, 
which was soon thereafter blown up. Little more 
than two hours were consumed in carrying these two 
strong positions. But in that time 729 men and 58 
officers had been killed. The enemy's loss in all 
narrowly approached 3,000. So disheartened and 
demoralized were the Mexicans that it is probable that 
had a charge then been made upon Chapultepec it 
would have been taken with comparative ease. Gen- 
eral Scott, however, ordered a cessation of the at- 
tack, though the day was still young, deferring the 
final assault until the morrow. 

September is the height of the rainy season in the 
latitude of the City of Mexico, and the canals and 
ditches by which the suburbs of that town were plenti- 
fully interspersed were filled with water. After the 
losses of the first day's fighting Scott had but about 
six thousand men with whom to take Chapultepec and 
force the entrance to the city. Looking back after 
nearly seventy years one is compelled to admire 
the leadership and the gallantry of the American forces 
in Mexico, for though invariably outnumbered and 
usually engaged against fortified positions, they were 
victorious without exception. Nor was any taint of 
cowardice discernible in the Mexicans. They fought 
well, but the Americans outdid them. 



278 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

On the night of the nth of September batteries were 
posted and for twenty-four hours the fortress on the 
craggy hill was pounded hard, until its defenders were 
demoralized and its guns crippled. On the morning 
of the 13th a storming party of 260 men — a true for- 
lorn hope — provided with scaling ladders, prepared for 
the attack. The batteries at the foot of the hill, and 
one half way up were first carried by Pillow's men. 
Then the forward line was opened, the stormers rushed 
through and began their climb. The castle blazed 
with musketry but the American batteries firing over 
the heads of the storming party kept the defenders 
within their walls. The fight was sharp, but the as- 
sailants reached the ditch, planted their ladders and 
swarmed over the walls. Like many another frown- 
ing menace, Chapultepec proved not so terrible when 
once attacked, and its guns were soon turned on the 
backs of the Mexicans who were serving the guns in 
the earthworks at the foot of the other side of the 
hill. This cleared the way for Quitman, who had been 
attacking these batteries from in front with but little 
measure of success, but when the shot from the fort 
on the hill behind them began to fall among the defend- 
ers they fled, and the way into the City of Mexico was 
open. 

Worth and Quitman pushed their way along two 
broad roads, built on causeways, with a towering stone 
aqueduct extending down the centre. Shields was first 
to reach a city gate and was about to assault it when 
an aide spurred up evidently bearing orders, Shields 
feared orders for him to defer his attack. The aide 
saluted, " General Scott's compliments, sir," began the 
messenger, but was abruptly interrupted. " I have no 
time for compliments just now," cried Shields and 
spurred his horse forward, out of reach of orders. 
The gate, that at San Cosme, was soon taken and Gen- 




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J fa 

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FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 279 

eral Shields had the pleasure of winning for his volun- 
teers the honor of being the first to enter the enemy's 
capital. Scott soon after joined the column, but if 
he commented upon his lieutenant's audacity the fact 
is not recorded. The incident parallels Lord Nelson's 
famous application of his spy-glass to his blind eye to 
avoid seeing a signal of recall. 

Night fell with the hostile forces still fighting in 
the streets of the suburbs and along the city wall. 
Hardly had darkness fallen when the Mexican army 
began its withdrawal, and at one o'clock on the morn- 
ing of the 14th came messengers from the city authori- 
ties to say that there was no longer any military com- 
mand in the city and to ask for terms. Scott refused 
to treat with Alcaldes and city counsellors and pushed 
his troops on to the centre of the city, where he estab- 
lished his headquarters in the Government Palace, and 
raised the flag over the Plaza, citadel, and other public 
places. For twenty-four hours there continued irregu- 
lar but savage fighting in the streets of the city. The 
Mexican soldiers, before they fled, freed, and armed 
about two thousand convicts and these, with a mob 
from the squalid sections of the town attacked the 
troops, firing from the doors and windows. Grape and 
canister were employed by the Americans to sweep 
the streets clear of these rioters. Heavy cannon were 
turned on the houses from which shots were fired, and 
no quarter was granted to those taken with guns in 
their hands. A few hours of relentless hunting and 
the guerilla war in the streets was end^d. 

The campaign in the valley of Mexico cost the in- 
vading Americans 2,703 men including 383 officers. 
The Mexican loss was 7,000 killed and wounded, and 
3,730 prisoners — or a total equalling the whole Ameri- 
can army of invasion. In the series of victories won 
the Americans took 20 standards, 75 pieces of 



28o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

artillery, 57 cannon mounted in fortresses, and 20,000 
stand of arms. 

With the fall of the Mexican capital the war was 
practically ended. Most of Santa Anna's troops 
melted away during his flight from the city, but with 
several thousand men he went to Puebla where a little 
garrison of Americans was standing out against a siege 
by guerillas. Only about five hundred men were thus 
hemmed in, their besiegers numbering thousands. 
But they barricaded themselves in the Plaza and a 
neighboring convent and for thirty days held out 
against the besiegers, sallying out now and then and 
burning the buildings which harbored annoying sharp- 
shooters. Santa Anna's arrival at the spot increased 
the odds against them, but in no wise lessened their 
determination nor were they ever dislodged. The 
Mexican commander left the siege to meet General 
Lane who was marching to the relief of the garrison. 
The usual short battle and retreat of the Mexicans fol- 
lowed, and Santa Anna faded from the military life 
of Mexico. His career had been singularly unfortu- 
nate. Not one victory illumines the dark record of 
his defeats. Perhaps no other general could have 
done better, but in his disaster Mexico covered him 
with obloquy and would doubtless have sacrificed him 
had he fallen into the hands of the faction which came 
into power with his final downfall. He fled the coun- 
try and spent the remainder of his days in the West 
Indies. 

The record of the American armies throughout the 
war was one of marvellous achievement. Not one de- 
feat blotted their escutcheon. General Taylor, whose 
successes made the earlier days of the war glorious 
and roused the country to its enthusiastic support, was 
nominated for President in the ensuing election and 
triumphantly elected. Scott, whose share was equally 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 281 

glorious and perhaps more arduous and more effective, 
was less well treated by the politicians but aroused the 
plaudits of military men of all nations and times. Gen- 
eral Grant says in his " Memoirs " : " Both the strategy 
and the tactics displayed by General Scott in the various 
engagements of August 20, 1847, were faultless, as 
I look back upon them now after the lapse of so many 
years." His audacity amazed some professional ob- 
servers. " Scott is lost," said the Duke of Wellington 
when the news of his abandoning his base to move 
upon Mexico City reached Europe. *' He has been 
carried away by success. He can't take the city, and 
he can't fall back upon his base." But Scott took the 
city and the Iron Duke for once was proven wrong. 

The war was fought without recourse to the militia. 
It was a war of invasion and fought by regulars and 
national volunteers alone. No attempt was made to 
test the constitutional rights of the militia by ordering 
them to cross the Rio Grande. The total force em- 
ployed during the war was 104,284, of whom 31,024 
were regulars and marines. The money cost exclusive 
of later pensions was one hundred and thirty millions 
approximately. Out of the war we gained Texas, 
New Mexico, and California, or approximately 
851,590 square miles, equalling seventeen times the 
area of New York State. The wealth representd by 
this territory today is incalculable. Nevertheless the 
war was bitterly criticised by a large share of the 
American people, and even to-day is held to have been 
discreditable to the United States. James Russell 
Lowell inveighed against it in his Biglow Papers, and 
indeed the whole brilliant chorus of New England 
writers was antagonistic to it. The opinion of a not 
inconsiderate number of the Northern people was ex- 
pressed by Gerritt Smith, a vigorous abolitionist, who 
being urged as a presidential candidate, declared that 



282 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

if elected he would stop the war with Mexico, give 
back the territory already taken, ask the pardon of 
God and Mexico for the wholesale murder of the 
Mexican people and abolish the army and the navy! 
But Mr. Smith was neither nominated nor elected. 



CHAPTER XI 

The War Between the States — The Right to Secede — Eleven States 
Leave the Union — Who Owned National Property? — Anderson 
at Fort Sumter — Virginia Invaded — Death of Ellsworth. 

Thirteen years after the war with Mexico the United 
States found itself confronted with the certainty of 
civil war. During that brief interval of peace the 
regular army had — after the time-honored practice of 
the Republic — been allowed to languish until in i860, 
it numbered but 16,367 officers and men. It had been 
employed mainly in suppressing Indian uprisings, and 
its scattered companies and regiments were widely dis- 
tributed among the states west of the Mississippi. 
Nominally the militia numbered 3,000,000, that is to 
say, there were that number of male citizens liable to 
military duty in the land, but the organized militia 
numbered but a few thousands and only a few regi- 
ments, organized in large cities, were properly drilled 
and adequately equipped. 

With the political causes of the gigantic struggle 
between the people of the North and South that en- 
dured from 1 861 to 1865, and tested to the fullest the 
courage, capacity, and resources of the warring sec- 
tions, we have nothing to do here. A sectional division 
based partly on slavery, partly on antagonistic com- 
mercial and industrial conditions broadened until no 
bridge could span the chasm. Being unable longer to 
control the National Government, the Southern states 
undertook to withdraw from the Union peaceably. 
The Northern states, having control of that govern- 
ment declared their purpose to compel by force obedi- 
ence to It on the part of the would-be secessionists, 

383 



284 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

On this issue the war was fought, not on the slavery 
issue. It frequently happens that a war is ended with- 
out the settlement of the issue on which it was waged, 
but with the incidental determination of some other 
question equally important. Our Civil War ended 
slavery as emphatically as it ended the contention that 
this was a voluntary Union from which any state could 
withdraw at will. 

The war between the states differed in one respect 
from the typical civil war. There was to each side 
an enem.y's country. It was not, like the Wars of the 
Roses in England, a struggle between hostile factions 
in the same neighborhood. When McDowell crossed 
the Potomac in 1861 or Butler occupied New Orleans 
in 1862, the Union forces were as truly in an enemy's 
country as were Scott's troops landed at Vera Cruz, 
or the Germans when they crossed the Rhine in 1871. 
In Kentucky and Missouri alone did the true conditions 
of civil war arise; there brother fought with brother 
and neighbor with neighbor. But there, too, the oper- 
ations of the organized armies were of the least im- 
portance; the partisan ranger and the guerrilla chiefly 
held the field. 

The proportions of this volume make it impossible 
to describe in detail, or even in some instances to refer 
to many actions which were contested with the utmost 
gallantry. During the four years of the Civil War, 
there were clashes between the hostile forces, the stories 
of which are full of the picturesque, and brim over with 
deeds of individual daring. In this volume, however, 
the author must confine himself to sketching broadly 
the grand strategy of the war, and describing only those 
battles which were an essential part of that strategy. 

The seven states which seceded first from the Union 
had been in a virtual state of independence for some 
weeks before any positive step was taken to coerce them. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 285 

They had seized all Federal property within their 
boundaries, including forts and arsenals. United 
States judges and marshals resigned or were without 
power to enforce their decrees or carry out Federal 
mandates. In expectation of conflict these states were 
strengthening their militia, and officers of Southern 
birth, educated at West Point, were resigning from the 
national army to serve their states. About such resig- 
nations there was much bitter feeling in the North at 
the time when " rebel " and " traitor " were the only 
words applied to the man who honestly and sincerely 
believed that his duty lay rather to his state than to the 
Union, and his place was fighting by the side of rela- 
tives and neighbors rather than against them. It has 
been pointed out that 182 graduates of the West Point 
Academy rose to rank above that of colonel in the 
Confederate army, and that of these eight were gen- 
erals, fifteen lieutenant-generals, and forty-eight major- 
generals. The student of our military history will find 
the names crowned with glory in the Mexican War 
winning new laurels in the Civil War on both sides. 
Perhaps the Confederacy had rather the better of it. 
Distinctively military historians complain that in the 
earlier days of the war, the Union authorities looked 
with little favor on the trained West Pointer and were 
inclined to put volunteers, often politicians, in places 
of command. The complaint finds striking support 
in the fact that when U. S. Grant wrote the adjutant- 
general saying that as a graduate of West Point, he 
felt it his duty to offer his services to the nation, no 
attention was paid to his letter and it was not even 
filed. Only by apointment as colonel of Illinois vol- 
unteers, by grace of Governor Yates, did the victor at 
Appomattox get into the army at all. 

Whatever the right of it may have been, the South 
was determined to go out of the Union and many of 



286 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

her sons, both in the army and the navy, followed their 
states. But on the question of taking the forts at 
various points, built by Federal revenues and manned 
by Federal troops came the first actual warlike clash. 
Several such strongholds were involved. Forts Pulaski 
and Jackson at the mouth of the Savannah River, Forts 
Morgan and Gaines in Mobile Bay, Forts St. Philip 
and Jackson, near the passes of the Mississippi, were 
all surrendered to the forces of the states in which 
they were located. Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor 
was saved for the Union by Lieutenant Adam J. Slem- 
mer, who scenting trouble, moved without orders his 
one company of United States regulars from the main- 
land where they could offer no effective resistance to 
an attack, to Fort Pickens down the bay. The state 
officers blustered and raged. Slemmer was commanded 
to surrender " in the names of the Governors of Flor- 
ida and Alabama." He refused. " I am a soldier 
of the United States," said he. " The governors are 
nothing to me." 

A week later appeared another flag of truce. This 
time the bearers were two officers who had resigned 
from the United States army and navy to cast their 
lot with the South. One of them had supervised the 
building of Fort Pickens, and expressed some surprise 
when Slemmer met him on the sands before the sally- 
port and declined to admit the visitors to the fort. 
They came to demand the surrender of the work, and 
brought with them a written communication to that 
effect, which Colonel Chase, the elder officer, proceeded 
to read. But his voice soon became shaky, and his 
eyes filled with tears, as he thought that he now stood 
as an enemy before two officers of the army in which 
he once had held an honored station. Stamping his 
foot with vexation, he handed the paper to his col- 
league, saying, *' Here, Farrand, you read it." But 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 287 

Captain Farrand was equally affected, and, with the 
remark that he had not his glasses, handed the paper 
on to Lieutenant Gilman, saying, " You have good 
eyes; read it for us." And so it happened that the 
summons to surrender was read aloud by one of the men 
to whom it was addressed. 

Fort Pickens never was surrendered, nor despite the 
bluster of the state authorities was it ever seriously 
attacked. To the latter reason, no doubt, is due the 
denial to Slemmer of the great measure of fame and 
immortality won by Major Robert Anderson, who did 
at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor what had been 
done at Fort Pickens, but was driven out of his fort 
by the cannon of the Confederates. 

In November, i860, Fort Moultrie in Charleston 
Harbor, historic as standing on the site of the old pal- 
metto fort whence Sergeant Jasper waved the flag of 
the colonies during the Revolution, was garrisoned by 
sixty-five regular artillerymen of the United States 
under Major Anderson. The commander was a 
Southerner and a slaveholder and it has been thought 
that he had been stationed there in the belief that he 
would do nothing to antagonize the hot-headed people 
of Charleston, who were the very prime movers in 
the secession cause. That estimate was singularly in- 
correct. From the moment he saw evidences of hos- 
tility among the people by whom he was surrounded 
he began to prepare for the defence of the property 
committed to his charge. Fort Moultrie was hopeless 
of defence against an attack from the land, having been 
designed as a water battery only. 

From the windows of his quarters in Fort Moultrie 
Major Anderson could see Fort Sumter rising dark 
and sullen, like some rocky crag straight from the 
waters of the bay. About it on every side the tides 
rushed in their daily ebb and flow. On three sides not 



288 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

a foothold could be secured at the base of the massive 
brick walls; the fourth side was fronted with an espla- 
nade, which cannon, in the flanking towers, could 
sweep clean with grape, should any enemy secure a 
lodgement thereon. The nearest point of land on 
which the enemy could erect batteries was more than a 
mile away. " Once in Sumter," mused the major, 
" my command could hold an enemy at bay until those 
speech-making fellows up at Washington can determine 
whether I am to be reenforced, or left to be starved 
into surrender." 

But letters to Washington pleading for authority 
to remove his command to Sumter were unanswered. 
The Buchanan administration, beaten in the election 
of i860, was serving its last three months of power, 
and whatever the attitude of the President may have 
been, Floyd, the secretary of war, was warmly devoted 
to the cause of secession. Despairing of any answer 
to his appeals, and convinced that the South Carolina 
troops would soon attack him in the ruinous Fort 
Moultrie, Major Anderson determined to occupy Fort 
Sumter. 

Christmas Day, i860, came and passed away with no 
festivity to mark it at the fort. The next day the 
routine of guard mount, drill, and parade went on as 
usual, with nothing to indicate that anything was to 
occur that should make that day memorable in the 
history of the nation. But just at nightfall Major 
Anderson called his officers, and said quietly, " Gentle- 
men, in twenty minutes we will leave for Fort Sumter. 
Prepare yourselves,, and see that the men make ready 
for the move." 

There was bustle for the next twenty minutes in Fort 
Moultrie, The officers' suppers stood smoking on tire 
tables, but there was no time for eating. Every one was 
packing knapsacks, looking up arms and equipments, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 289 

and preparing for a quick and silent march. Just at 
sunset the little column filed out of Fort Moultrie, and 
took up the march to the point where boats were in 
waiting to ferry the troops over to Fort Sumter. A 
rear-guard was left behind in the deserted fort, with 
orders to keep the passage clear for the boats, even if 
in order to do so a few round shot had to be sent at 
the Charleston guard-boat that constantly patrolled the 
harbor about Fort Sumter. Soon the troops were all 
embarked, and the heavy boats were slowly making 
their way across the water. The rear-guard standing 
at the cannon on the sea-wall at Fort Moultrie watched 
them eagerly in their sluggish course. Before they 
were half-way across, the guard-boat was seen steaming 
down upon them; and the gunners in Fort Moultrie 
brought their shotted guns to bear upon her, ready to 
blow her out of the water if she should attempt to 
arrest or run down Major Anderson's troops. But 
after slowing up and giving the boats a careful exami- 
nation, the people on the guard-boat seemed to reach 
the conclusion that all was right; and in a moment she 
was lost to sight in the gathering darkness, and the beat- 
ing of her paddles died away. Five minutes later the 
boats made fast to the wharf in front of Fort Sumter, 
and the troops began to disembark. 

Signal was then made for the rear-guard to abandon 
Fort Moultrie, which they speedily did, first chopping 
down the flag-staff, spiking the cannon, and burning 
the gun carriages. By eight o'clock the movement was 
completed, and Anderson, with his little command and 
provisions enough for some weeks, was safely housed 
behind the massive walls of Fort Sumter. 

Acting thus of his own initiative Anderson had 
shifted the responsibility for affairs in Charleston Har- 
bor from his own shoulders to those of President 
Buchanan and his advisers. The Federal troops were 



290 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

safe for a time. No storming party could take that 
island fortress. A bombardment could hardly reduce 
it. Starvation, it is true, might compel the garrison 
to withdraw and on that fact hung the action that 
finally set off the powder magazine of civil war. Floyd, 
the secretary of war, furious with Anderson, urged the 
President to authorize an order for the evacuation of 
Fort Sumter, This Buchanan refused to do and the 
Secretary resigned to become a brigadier-general in the 
Confederate army. Meantime the question of provi- 
sions for the garrison became pressing. Buchanan, still 
desirous of avoiding anything that would seem like 
coercion or an armed invasion of the South, sent a 
merchant vessel, the " Star of the West," carrying 
two thousand troops and supplies for the beleagured 
garrison. She carried no cannon, nor had she any 
naval escort to enable her to discharge her mission 
forcibly if necessary. Though the administration 
strove to send off the expedition secretly its despatch 
was well known to the Confederates, and when the 
" Star of the West " appeared in Charleston Harbor, 
warning shots from Fort Moultrie and Morris Island 
turned her back. Fort Sumter fired no gun in her de- 
fence, for Major Anderson was under positive orders 
not to fire unless himself fired upon. The affair re- 
flected little credit upon the administration which had 
stooped to an effort to clothe in secrecy the perfectly 
legitimate reenforcement of a United States fort. As 
for the garrison of the fort it was furious at being 
compelled to witness the flag fired upon without one 
shot in its defence. 

The Buchanan administration went out of office 
and that of Lincoln came in. It was determined to 
send a relief expedition to Sumter but the preparations 
were bungled, and the news of the project reached 
Charleston long before a single ship was ready. The 



1 



-f ?r X 










FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 291 

Confederates instantly summoned Anderson to surren- 
der. On his refusal the bombardment was begun early 
in the morning of April 13, 1861. The first shot was 
fired by a venerable Virginian, Edmund Ruifin by name, 
and was well aimed, for the projectile struck the outer 
wall of the magazine in Fort Sumter, burst, set fire to 
some loose powder, and for a moment made the de- 
fenders think that the first cannon-shot had exploded 
their ammunition and blown up the magazine. 

After the second gun the firing became general. 
From Morris and Sullivan Islands, and from Cum- 
ming's Point, from Forts Moultrie and Johnston and 
from the floating battery, a hail of shells, bombs, and 
solid shot was poured upon Fort Sumter. The thun- 
ders of the cannonade rose in majestic cadence, and 
could be heard far out at sea. Scars began to appear 
upon the face of the besieged fort. Clouds of dust 
and flying bits of stone could be seen as the shots took 
effect. Still for more than an hour it maintained a 
sullen silence, and let its assailants do their worst. 

By half-past seven the garrison in the fort had fin- 
ished worrying down the short ration of salt pork that 
was dignified by the name of breakfast, and as the 
drums beat the assembly the soldiers formed in one 
of the bomb-proofs to prepare for the duties of the 
day. By this time the enemy had secured the range 
of the fort with considerable accuracy, and his shells 
were dropping upon the parade, and his solid shot 
were making such havoc among the guns mounted 
upon the parapet that the necessity for keeping the little 
garrison under cover was obvious. With a view to 
saving the strength of his men as much as possible. 
Major Anderson divided the garrison into two " re- 
liefs," and fixed the time each should serve the guns 
at four hours. Soon the first division was at the guns, 
and with the nine guns they were able to handle they 



292 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

opened upon the batteries on Morris, James, and Sul- 
livan's Islands a fire so vigorous that for a time the 
Confederates thought that in some way the fort had 
secured reenforcements during the night. 

But after two hours' firing the gunners in Fort Sum- 
ter began to see that, with all their enthusiasm, they 
were engaged in a hopeless contest. Their heaviest 
guns they could not use, for they were mounted on the 
parapet, and Major Anderson felt his force too small 
to expose the lives of his men outside of the bomb- 
proofs. The shell guns were useless for the same 
reason. The only cannon which were employed in 
the battle (except a few surreptitiously discharged by 
some adventurous gunners) were the 32- and 42-poun- 
ders. The shot from these cannon rebounded from 
the iron-clad battery like hailstones from a roof, and 
the gunners, after seeing their best cannon prac- 
tice thus wasted, abandoned that target and turned 
their guns on Fort Moultrie. But there they 
met with little better success. The massive walls 
of sand-bags that covered every exposed point 
were as impenetrable as the railroad iron that incased 
the iron-clad battery. The embrasures were closed 
with cotton bales, so that even when a shot from Fort 
Sumter entered an embrasure it did little harm. Four 
hours of well directed cannonading produced no more 
effect upon Fort Moultrie than to silence one of its 
guns for a few minutes, and to riddle the brick bar- 
racks that stood at the back part of the fort. There- 
fore, when the relief came to take the guns for the 
second period, the gunners who had worked four hours 
to achieve such puny results felt their enthusiasm wan- 
ing somewhat, though their courage remained undi- 
minished. Just before the relieving party went to the 
guns two veteran sergeants of the first detail determined 
to have some sort of revenge upon the enemy. Peer- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 293 

ing out of an open port they looked about for some 
vulnerable object upon which to turn their guns. About 
the Confederate batteries no living being could be seen, 
but down the beach, nearer the city, was a large crowd 
of spectators. On these the veterans trained their 
guns, and sent two solid shot that struck, the beach, 
ricochetted over the heads of the crowd, and went 
crashing through the walls of a hotel behind them. 
Thereafter the sensitive sergeants were not troubled by 
the appearance of a crowd of unsympathetic lookers-on. 

By this time it was nearly noon. Surgeon Craw- 
ford, who had been serving in command of one of the 
guns, made a visit to the parapet, which the enemy's 
shot and shell were sweeping at a fearful rate, and 
soon returned from that dangerous post to report that 
out beyond the bar he could see the forms of several 
vessels dimly outlined through the smoke. These 
were the vessels of the relief squadron, and their 
signals to the fort were quickly made. Sumter tried 
to respond by dipping her flag, but the halliards 
were shot away, and the flag caught and hung helplessly 
at half-mast. 

The falling of the flag, though but temporary, was 
construed by the Confederates as a surrender and soon 
afterward one enterprising officer. Major Wigfall, 
reached the fort in a row-boat. Landing on the espla- 
nade he sought admittance but could attract the atten- 
tion of no one save a soldier loading a cannon in an 
embrasure who, amazed at the spectacle of a man in 
full Confederate uniform, refused him admittance. 
The Confederate shot and shell were hitting the fort 
in numbers quite disquieting to a gentleman on the little 
platform outside, and Wigfall ran from one casement 
to another until he finally secured admission. Once 
in Anderson's presence he convinced that officer that 
the time was fit for surrender, and a party of Confed- 



294 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

erate officers arriving shortly after with authority to 
treat, the details of the surrender were speedily agreed 
upon. At noon the next day these terms were carried 
out. The flag was hauled down from the flag-staff, 
while the little garrison that had endured so much in 
its defence was drawn up on the parade. Unhappily, 
the premature discharge of a cannon during the salute 
led to the death of one of Anderson's brave soldiers. 
The Confederates present stood with uncovered heads, 
while this one victim, of what had otherwise been a 
bloodless battle, was buried within the walls of the 
fort he had so bravely defended. Then, with the 
Stars and Stripes flying at their head, and the band 
playing " Yankee Doodle," the Federal soldiers 
marched to the vessel which was to take them out to 
the United States fleet. The fleet once reached, the 
tattered flag of Fort Sumter was raised to the masthead 
of the man-of-war " Baltic " and saluted by all the other 
vessels in the squadron. Then they bore away to the 
northward, leaving Fort Sumter in the hands of the 
Confederates, and as Anderson looked back and saw 
the almost unknown flag of the Confederacy — the Stars 
and Bars — ^floating from those shattered- ramparts, he 
made a solemn vow to raise once again that Union flag 
over Sumter's bastions. How well in later years he 
discharged that vow we shall yet see. 

Some thoughtful writers on the Civil War declare 
that the advocates of secession blundered gravely when 
they fired on Fort Sumter. Up to that time, though 
seven states had seceded and the authority of the 
United States was flouted within their borders, the 
Federal government had done nothing to coerce them. 
No troops had been ordered to the states affected. There 
had been no call for the militia, nor anything done to 
show that the authorities at Washington intended to 
maintain the integrity of the Union by force. Had 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 295 

this condition continued much longer foreign govern- 
ments might have considered secession as an accomp- 
lished fact and recognized the truant states as inde- 
pendent nations. But the shots fired at Sumter set the 
nation aHame. Factions in the North disappeared. 
Everyone was for the preservation of the Union. The 
morning after Sumter fell, President Lincoln called 
for seventy-five thousand men to put down the " insur- 
rection." Within forty-eight hours the needed men 
were under arms ready to march. The steps of most 
were turned toward Washington, for in the East the 
Potomac v/as the frontier. Passing through Baltimore 
the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was set upon by a 
mob and four of its members slain in the streets. The 
blood of the North boiled the more fiercely, and en- 
listments rose far above the number of men called for. 
In two weeks General Butler with four regiments en- 
tered Baltimore, made camp there, and treated the 
city much as a captured enemy's town. 

The war spirit was now everywhere. We can but 
briefly note some of the more epochal events. By 
June 24, 1 861, eleven states had seceded — Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, 
Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and 
Tennessee. Virginia, the state which bore the brunt of 
the fighting, was last to secede. Nearly one-half of 
her territory, up in the northwestern corner, populated 
by mountaineers, who as a rule were non-slaveholders, 
refused to follow the rest of the commonwealth, broke 
away and organized the loyal state of West Virginia. 
The state of Virginia, itself the Mother of Presidents, 
hesitated long before following her sisters of the South. 
Her noble son, Robert E. Lee, though destined to lead 
the armies of the Confederacy and to remain forever 
the most chivalric exponent of the Lost Cause, was 
opposed to secession and followed his state out of the 



296 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Union with a sigh, Kentucky, too, though a slave state, 
refused to secede. For a time its authorities strove to 
keep it in a position of neutrality. When the Presi- 
dent asked the state for its quota of the 75,000 men 
called for — four regiments — the governor indignantly 
refused to furnish one man. Encouraged by this, the 
Confederate authorities asked for one regiment but 
met with a like rebuff. This does not mean that Ken- 
tucky furnished no men to the war — it did by thou- 
sands and in almost equal numbers to both armies. 
But the enlistments were individual. The state au- 
thorities had no share in them. 

" It was no uncommon sight in Louisville at this 
time," writes an officer who served in Kentucky, " to 
see a squad of recruits for the Union service marching 
up one side of a street, while a squad destined for the 
Confederacy was moving down the other. In the in- 
terior a train bearing a company destined for Nelson's 
(Union) camp took aboard at the next county town 
another company which was bound for Camp Boone 
(Confederate). The officers in charge made a treaty 
by which their men were kept in separate cars." 

Missouri, a neighboring border and slave-state, 
largely dominated by secessionist influence, still re- 
mained with the Union. A state convention, dominated 
by Unionists and neutralists declared for neutrality. 
When Lincoln called for troops the governor refused 
angrily, declared the purpose for which they were de- 
manded " illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary; 
in its objects inhuman and diabolical." As in Ken- 
tucky both factions recruited side by side and in both 
of these states the fighting had the character of a true 
civil war. In Missouri the battle was on early for 
control of the state. That it was held in the Union was 
due to the energy and courage of Nathaniel Lyon, 
at the outbreak of the war a mere captain of United 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 297 

States infantry. First seizing the state arsenal at St. 
Louis, Lyon disarmed the local secessionists, intercept- 
ing and confiscating arms sent them by Jefferson Davis. 
This he followed up by occupying the state capital with 
an armed force and expelling the governor and state 
officials. As a result of these drastic measures, Mis- 
souri never formally seceded although the sympathy 
of the great masses of its people was with the South. 
Lyon was killed in the first and only considerable bat- 
tle fought on Missouri soil, at Wilson's Creek early 
in August, but his work had been done. Missouri re- 
mained one great partisan battle field, but the moral 
disaster of her secession was averted. 

In July, 1 861, therefore, eleven states were definitely 
out of the Union, refusing to obey the national laws 
or to recognize United States officials, whether military 
or civil. Two states, Kentucky and Missouri, were 
nominally in the Union, but practically debatable ter- 
ritory, for control in which both belligerents fought 
savagely. As to military preparedness the South was 
the better equipped for immediate action; the North 
for a long continued struggle. The military spirit had 
always been strong in the South. Its militia organiza- 
tions formed more of a part of the life of the people 
than in the North. The planters, who set the general 
pace, were all horsemen and ready with their weapons. 
Perhaps the ever present menace of a servile insurrection 
may have developed this military spirit, but whatever 
its cause, it enabled the South to put more and better 
drilled militia regiments into the field with greater 
promptitude than could the national authorities. But 
the vastly greater population of the North, and the 
ceaseless flood of immigrants into Northern ports gave 
assurance from the very outset that in a contest of en- 
durance the Northern states would win. 

This fact should have led the Confederates to strike 



298 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

early and strike hard. For months they had the city 
of Washington practically at their mercy, and with all 
the governments of Europe eager to assist in the break- 
up of the Union by the recognition of the Confederacy, 
it is easy to imagine what the effect of the occupation of 
the National Capital by the Confederate forces would 
have been. But it must be said for the politicians who 
forced the secession movement that they were at least 
consistent in their theories. They believed that their 
states had the right to withdraw from the Union. 
They denied to the remaining states any right to com- 
pel them to return, or to invade their territory for the 
purpose of enforcing Federal laws. But they did not 
believe themselves justified in invading the territory 
of their sister states and accordingly rested within their 
own territory until attacked. 

May 24, 1 86 1, the day after Virginia ratified the 
ordinance of secession, the United States authorities 
took their first warlike step by sending troops across 
into Virginia, fortifying Arlington, the ancestral home 
of Robert E. Lee, now a national cemetery, and Alex- 
andria, and built intrenchments from Chain Bridge 
above Washington to Alexandria below. In occupying 
the latter town a tragedy occured that brought the 
grim fact that war means murder very much home to 
the people. For some years a militia company, known 
as the Ellsworth Zouaves, had been famous throughout 
the North for the picturesqueness and precision of its 
"drill. As a military organization it had not been taken 
seriously, being rather a troupe of entertainers; but 
with the outbreak of war, Ellsworth and most of his 
men at once enlisted, and the command was increased 
to the proportions of a regiment. 

On the day of the advance into Virginia, Colonel 
Ellsworth and his men crossed the Potomac River, 
and entered Alexandria. This place was filled with 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 299 

Confederate sympathizers, and for weeks past a Con- 
federate flag flying from the roof of its chief hotel had 
been noted by the loyal people of Washington, and 
had even been visible from the windows of the White 
House.. Colonel Ellsworth, marching at the head of 
his regiment, remembered this flag, and as soon as the 
town was completely in control of the Union forces, he 
went to tear it down with his own hands. It was a 
rash act; but the war was still young, and officers were 
apt to be carried away by their enthusiasm. Two sol- 
diers accompanied him to the house. 

" Whose flag is that? " he demanded of a man who 
stood in the door. 

" I don't know," was the cool response. 

" It must be taken down at once." 

" Go and take it, if you want it," responded the se- 
cessionist, turning on his heel and walking away. 

Followed by his companions, Ellsworth ascended to 
the roof of the house, cut the halliards, and throwing 
the flag over his arm began to descend. Just as he 
reached the second floor a door opening upon the hall- 
way was thrown open, and a man sprang out, levelled 
a double-barrelled shot-gun, and discharged it full at 
the breast of the unfortunate officer. The gun was 
loaded with buckshot, and the fatal charge drove before 
it, almost into the heart of the murdered man, a gold 
badge that he wore pinned upon his breast, and that 
bore the motto, " Non nobis sed pro patria." Slain 
instantly by the fearful wound, Ellsworth fell forward 
without a groan. Then the sound of another gunshot 
rang through the house as one of Ellsworth's com- 
panions sent a bullet through the brain of the murderer, 
and followed it by plunging his sabre-bayonet again 
and again into his body. Then the wife of the dead 
secessionist came rushing from her room, threw herself 
upon the body of her husband, and called upon him in 



300 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tones so piteous that even the Zouaves, mad with rage 
as they were, could scarce conceal their pity. The 
group about the two dead bodies in the dark and nar- 
row hall made a scene at once dramatic and appalling. 
It was described in the vivid phrases of the newspaper 
correspondents in all parts of the country the next day, 
and carried a thrill to thousands of hearts North and 
South. Each of the two dead men was called a hero 
and a martyr by those who sympathized with the cause 
which he represented. 

There followed some weeks of skirmishing along 
the south bank of the Potomac from Harper's Ferry to 
its mouth, and in the country back of it. But it was 
becoming more and more evident that the real, and 
effective, fighting was to be on the line between Wash- 
ington and the Confederate capital at Richmond. The 
newspapers of the North had hardly seen the army 
move across the river into Virginia before they set up 
the cry of " On to Richmond." That the troops were 
raw and undrilled volunteers, commanded by officers 
who had never seen a battle, did not dampen the ardor 
of the strategists of the press. They felt a little as 
did General George B. McClellan who, on taking 
command of the Union troops in West Virginia, read 
an address in which he said, " I now fear but one thing 
— that you will not find foemen worthy of your steel." 
This fear, it may be noted, was very speedily dispelled. 

In chief command of the United States armies was 
General Winfield Scott, a veteran of the War of 1812, 
and the only officer in the army who had ever com- 
manded a body of five thousand men. But Scott was 
too old for active service, and the command of the 
Union army south of the Potomac was given to Brevet- 
Major McDowell, who was created a brigadier-general 
for the purpose, but whose largest command prior to 
that time had been a single company. Curiously 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 301 

enough the Confederate commander directly opposed 
to him, General P. G. T. Beauregard, had been his 
classmate and friend at West Point. 

Both Scott and McDowell understood the grave 
danger of complying with the demand for an advance 
with the force at their command. Whatever the Con- 
federate force opposed to them might be, the Union 
army at the time was clearly unfit. It was composed 
almost entirely of men enlisted for three months and 
the term of their service had already more than half 
expired. On the 3rd of May, the President had called 
for 42,034 more men to enlist as volunteers for three 
years, and in the regular army. Scott was anxious to 
defer an advance until these men should be fit for 
service. But the country was determined that active 
operations should be begun at once, and that the three- 
months men should have their share in them. Accord- 
ingly in deference to public clamor, preparations were 
made for the advance that terminated in the disastrous 
field of Bull Run. 



CHAPTER XII 

" On to Richmond " — The Army Advances into Virginia — The Prob- 
lem Confronting General McDowell — Patterson and Jackson in 
the Shenandoah Valley — The Battle of Bull Run— Jackson Wins 
the Title " Stonewall " — Defeat of the Union Army — Panic in 
Washington. 

When it had been determined to defer to public sen- 
timent, overrule the advice of trained military experts, 
and begin active operations against the enemy's capi- 
tal, it was determined to strike first at Manassas 
Junction about thirty-five miles south of Washington. 
Here two railroads crossed. One ran from Washing- 
ton to Richmond and thence southward through the 
Confederacy. The other led westward through the 
mountains to the fertile Valley of the Shenandoah. 
Recognizing the importance of the railroad junction, 
the Confederates had thrown up earthworks which 
were manned by about thirty thousand men under 
General Beauregard. A serious factor in the prob- 
lem of attack, however, was cited by General Mc- 
Dowell in the discussions of the plan of campaign at 
the War Department. He pointed out on the map 
the railroad extending from Manassas to the Shenan- 
doah Valley. This railroad, being within the enemy's 
line, he could not cut or destroy until the enemy had 
been defeated. In the meantime it was at the service 
of Beauregard as a means of bringing him reenforce- 
ments. Moreover, the reenforcements were near at 
hand, for In the Shenandoah Valley was the Confed- 
erate General Johnston, with a force of more than ten 
thousand men. 

" I can beat Beauregard's force with an army of 

30S5 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 303 

thirty thousand men," said McDowell; "but you 
must see to it that Johnston does not bring his troops 
out of the Shenandoah Valley to his aid." 

" General Patterson, with an army of far greater 
strength, confronts Johnston at Harper's Ferry," an- 
swered Scott. " You may make your plans in full 
reliance that Johnston will be kept in the valley, or 
that if he does move it will be with Patterson's twenty 
thousand men at his heels." 

Many days elapsed between the time of the decision 
to move upon Manassas and the actual advance of 
the army. Confederate spies m Washington kept 
the leaders at Richmond thoroughly posted upon all 
the preparations that were making. There is no 
more romantic chapter of the war than the story 
of the Confederate secret service in the North, though 
it has never been adequately told. Beauregard knew 
all about McDowell's plans as soon as they were 
made, and some things he knew of which the Wash- 
ington authorities were densely ignorant, to their sub- 
sequent disaster. 

One of the latter bits of information was that Gen- 
eral Patterson, commanding the Union forces in the 
Shenandoah Valley was not an adversary to be greatly 
dreaded. Patterson was a veteran of the War of 18 12 
and the War with Mexico, not a distinguished officer 
in either but a patriotic soldier whose services were 
thought to entitle him to a command, the responsibili- 
ties of which his years ill-fitted him to endure, for he 
was well past seventy years of age. He prepared a 
great expedition for the capture of Harper's Ferry, 
" anticipating a fierce resistance," for as he v/rote, " the 
insurgents are strongly intrenched, have an immense 
number of guns and will contest every inch of ground." 
Instead of doing so General Johnston, one of the 
ablest Confederate generals, had discerned that the 



304 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

place was of no strategic importance, hard to defend, 
and commanding neither a railroad, a navigable stream, 
nor a good turnpike. Accordingly he abandoned it 
contemptuously and retreated up the Shenandoah Val- 
ley to a point whence he could expeditiously reenforce 
Beauregard at Manassas. This it was Patterson's task 
to prevent him from doing. 

The keen eye of the veteran Scott in command at 
Washington discerned clearly the importance of hold- 
ing Jackson in the valley. He had served with Patter- 
son in Mexico and his dispatches to that commander 
indicate little confidence in his capacity. " Do not let 
the enemy amuse and delay you with a small force in 
front while he reenforces the Junction with his main 
body," read one. General Scott's prescience was per- 
fect. This was precisely what Johnston did to the 
hapless Patterson. The latter indignantly replied: 
" The enemy has stolen no march on me. I have 
kept him actively employed and by threats and recon- 
noissances in force have caused him to be reenforced." 
Alas for Patterson ! At the moment he wrote that dis- 
patch Johnston, instead of being reenforced, had left 
a slender line of men to deceive the Union commander 
and with practically all his army was marching through 
Ashby's Gap to the aid of Beauregard. 

McDowell's advance upon Manassas began July i6, 
1861. It was the first great military expedition with 
which the war authorities of the Union ever had to 
grapple. To carry provisions and munitions of war, 
750 wagons were specially built and the whole North 
was ransacked for the three thousand necessary horses. 
Soldiers were not employed as teamsters and one thou- 
sand men had to be found for this service. In the 
marching columns were twenty-nine thousand men, ad- 
vancing by three nearly parallel roads. Each carried 
three days' rations. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 305 

" The three following things," said the marching 
order, "will not be pardonable in any commander: 
ist, to come upon a battery or breastwork without a 
knowledge of its position; 2d, to be surprised; 3d, to 
fall back." 

Put on their guard by this order the troops moved 
forward with painful caution. The scouts and skir- 
mishers, still strange to their duties, continually gave 
false alarms. The troops, newly recruited and half- 
disciplined, found the march at first a pleasurable holi- 
day. " They stopped every moment to pick black- 
berries or get water," says McDowell; "they would 
not keep in the ranks, order as much as you please; 
when they came where the water was fresh they would 
pour the old water out of their canteens, and fill them 
with fresh water; they were not used to denying them- 
selves much; they were not used to journeys on foot." 

Many of the people of Fairfax Court House aban- 
doned their houses, and fled as the troops approached. 
The more lawless members of the Union army saw in 
this an opportunity for plunder, and some of the un- 
thinking ones joined them out of mere sportiveness. 
Houses were plundered, and a few barns and stables 
burned. At nightfall several soldiers paraded the 
streets clad in women's clothes, which they had taken 
from some of the deserted houses. One man was 
discovered, by a regimental officer, attired in the sur- 
plice and bands of an Episcopal clergyman. In his 
hand he held a prayer-book, from which, with great 
solemnity, he was reading a funeral service for the 
" President of the Southern Confederacy." 

After a turbulent night, during which the soldiers 
surrendered the rest they needed to their desire for a 
frolic, the reveille sounded, and the troops were soon 
again on the march. By nine o'clock they had reached 
Centreville, where they were halted, and the comman- 



^i(^ 



3o6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ders began their plans for the battle they knew was im- 
pending. 

Beauregard's army of some twenty thousand men 
was posted behind a small stream with steep banks 
called Bull Run. From it the battle took its name in 
Northern chronicles; the Southern records always re- 
fer to it as the battle of Manassas. The stream had 
seven fords and one bridge, all defended by earthworks 
and the Confederate line extended along its bank for 
eight miles. A survey of this line convinced McDowell 
that an attack on the front would be futile and he 
determined to march around the enemy's flank. By 
way of testing out Beauregard's strength, he sent Gen- 
eral Tyler with two regiments of cavalry and two of 
infantry to reconnoitre in the neighborhood of Black- 
burn's Ford. Tyler was ordered not to bring on a 
battle, but carried away at the sight of a tempting tar- 
get, he swung two field guns into position and opened 
lire on the Confederate camp which with all its activity 
of parking artillery and marching troops lay spread 
out before him, all unconscious of his proximity. His 
first shell showed the worth of unpractised artillerists. 
It flew a hundred feet above the target aimed at and 
fell more than two miles beyond. But by the merest 
accident it landed in the fireplace of Beauregard's head- 
quarters and blew his dinner to pieces. This effrontery 
could not be overlooked. The Confederate batteries 
returned the fire with equal spirit and no better marks- 
manship. Tyler thought he might send out a line of 
skirmishers. Then the Confederates thought they 
would try an assault on his battery. Before long both 
sides were hotly engaged when Tyler, remembering he 
had been ordered not to fight, withdrew his troops. 
By this time it was nightfall and both armies went into 
bivouac, the Confederates exultantly claiming that they 
had won the first skirmish. The next day, the 19th and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 307 

Saturday, the 20th, were passed idly by both armies. 
McDowell could not attack for his provision and muni- 
tion wagons had not come up. The delay cost him 
dear. The time of his troops was beginning to 
expire and Saturday afternoon one regiment and one 
battery whose three months' term was ended turned and 
marched back to Washington; "marching from the 
field to the sound of the enemy's cannon," as an officer 
bitterly remarked. 

Beauregard was quite content with the delay. He 
had telegraphed to Richmond, and thence the order had 
been flashed along the wires to Johnston, in the Shenan- 
doah Valley, to make all haste to join the Confederate 
host at Manassas. McDowell, not a whit behind in 
forethought, had telegraphed to Washington, and the 
order had been sent to Patterson : " Hold Johnston in 
the valley. Do not let him steal a march on you." But 
Patterson had proved wanting in diligence, and 
that very night a silent column of nine thousand 
Confederate soldiers stole away from the camp 
in the Shenandoah Valley, and began a forced 
march for the nearest railway station. On the 
way they met an officer galloping madly down the 
road. Reining in his smoking steed, he asked 
anxiously for Johnston, and handed him a brief note. 
*' If you wish to help me, now is the time. Beaure- 
gard," was all it said, but it spurred the weary soldiers 
to a quicker pace. The officer who had brought the 
note killed his horse in his fierce ride from Ashby's 
Gap. There was no halting by the way-side, no pick- 
ing blackberries for these men. The fate of a battle 
depended on their promptitude. 

Saturday night, when McDowell thought all was 
well in the valley, Johnston sat with Beauregard in a 
farm-house back of the Confederate lines planning the 
battle they knew would be fought on the morrow. 



3o8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

McDowell planned to turn their left flank at Sudley's 
Ford, but the two Confederate generals, believing 
themselves at least equal to the Federals had deter- 
mined to give up the advantage of awaiting the attack 
behind intrenchments and themselves attack the Union 
base at Centreville. However, McDowell moved first. 

Sunday morning dawns. The Federals have been 
marching toward Sudley Ford since two at night. The 
narrow road by which their route lay is choked with 
weary men, and straining horses dragging field pieces. 
Delay follows delay. The ford should have been 
crossed by daybreak; it is nine o'clock before the head 
of the column reaches it. Then all throw themselves 
upon the ground to rest, and eat a meagre breakfast. 
In the meantime a man living in a mill by the side of 
the road has galloped ahead to warn the Confederates 
that the Yankees are coming down upon them, by way 
of Sudley's Ford. 

Let us look at the field on which the battle is to be 
fought, and the positions held by the troops of either 
side of that eventful Sunday morning. Bull Run flows 
in a crooked channel, from the northwest to the south- 
east. The Confederate troops were on its westerly 
side, facing east. Evans's brigade held the extreme left 
flank at the stone bridge, some half a mile below Sud- 
ley's Ford. Below Evans was Cocke, then Bonham, 
then Longstreet, then Jones, and finally, on the extreme 
right flank eight miles from Evans, was Ewell. Each 
of these divisions was stationed at such a point as to 
hold a ford. In the rear were the reserves — Bee 
Early, Holmes, and Jackson. The latter had just 
come from the Shenandoah Valley, and we shall see 
what his presence on the Bull Run battle field meant 
for the Confederates. 

If we choose the hour of half-past six in the morning 
we find the Confederate troops posted as above, while 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 309 

the Federals are advancing by three roads. Straight 
down the turnpike from Centreville come the troops 
of Tyler, with drums beating and colors flying. Rich- 
ardson's division marches down to make a demonstra- 
tion at Blackburn's Ford, the scene of the skirmish of 
two days before. All kinds of uniforms are visible 
in the ranks. The dark blue of the small body of 
regulars, the brilliant scarlet trousers and fezzes of the 
Zouaves, the light gray of some of the city militia com- 
works of Molino del Rey, Casa da Mata, and the 
lonely country roads on the quiet Sunday morning. 

Ayres's battery of rifled guns precedes Tyler's ad- 
vance. Swinging into position at a favorable point 
on the turnpike, it opens fire on Evans's troops, who 
guard the stone bridge. It is the first gun of the great 
battle. The second shot cuts through the tent of 
Beauregard's chief signal officer. Soon the whole bat- 
tery of rifled cannon is in full play. The Confederates 
remain dumb, having no artillery of sufficient range to 
reply. 

McDowell's whole plan of battle rested on the sup- 
position that Tyler would show so much activity as 
to lead the enemy to believe that the main assault was 
to be made by the stone bridge. But in this Tyler 
signally failed. After maintaining an almost ineffec- 
tive cannonade for some time, he sent forward a line of 
skirmishers, who engaged the Confederate skirmishers 
in the woods on the northern bank of Bull Run. More 
than this he did nothing. 

Evans, meanwhile, saw rising high above the tree- 
tops beyond Bull Run a dense cloud of dust, — that 
telltale signal which every army marching in the sum- 
mer-time gives of its movements. This first led him to 
believe that the skirmish in his front was but a feint, 
intended to draw his attention away from some more 
serious assault upon him from some other quarter. 



3IO STORY OF OUR ARMY 

While speculating upon this, he saw a horseman, hat- 
less and coatless, coming galloping down upon him in 
wild excitement. 

" General, the Yankees are coming that way," shouts 
the messenger, " They are crossing Bull Run at Sud- 
ley's Ford by thousands." 

Evans here shows his soldierly qualities. Though 
his orders had been only to hold the stone bridge 
against all comers, he quickly abandons his position 
there, leaving but four companies to keep up the petty 
skirmish with Tyler's troops. Marching down the 
turnpike on the double-quick, he chose a position on a 
slight ridge, just inside the bend of Young's Branch, 
a little stream emptying into Bull Run. With eight 
hundred men he has to check the advance of an army; 
but he forms his line boldly, and sends a courier off to 
the rear for aid. Soon a line of skirmishers appears, 
emerging from the woods. A scattering fire of mus- 
ketry begins, and here and there men begin to fall to 
the earth. Both sides are still ignorant of war, and 
the Federals suffer seriously for their inexperience. 
With a rapid, steady advance, they could sweep 
Evans's handful of men away, and carry confusion 
down the whole Confederate line. Instead of this 
their assault drags, and the brigades of Bee and Bar- 
tow come to the aid of Evans, before his position has 
been seriously shaken. 

But now the battle becomes general. The roar of 
artillery and the ceaseless rattle of the musketry dis- 
may the untried soldiery. The shrill notes of the 
bugle and the cheering of the Confederates tell that 
reenforcements are hastening to confront the Federals, 
whose advance now begins to gain in spirit. Despite 
the reenforcements, the Federals are still in overpower- 
ing numbers, and force the Confederates back from 
point to point, until their rout seems inevitable. Fresh 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 311 

troops come to aid the blue-coats. Heintzelmann's bri- 
gade comes up on the right, and Sherman, with a 
detachment of Tyler's troops, succeeds in finding a 
ford above the stone bridge, and comes to the aid of 
his comrades. 

Now the Confederates begin to fall back; in orderly 
retreat at first, then in seemingly hopeless confusion. 
Shouts, conflicting commands, cries of pain, the shriek 
and crash of shells, made up so deafening a tumult 
that the men could not comprehend the frantic efforts 
of their officers to rally them. So, in a panic-stricken, 
surging mass, the troops of Bee and Evans flee across 
the turnpike and out of the valley of Young's Branch. 
On the crest of the hill back of the road is a brigade of 
troops that had come but a few hours before from the 
Shenandoah Valley. Five regiments and two batteries 
are there, unscarred by the conflict, and in command of 
a man then almost unknown, but destined to win, per- 
haps, the proudest laurels worn by any Southern soldier 
of the Civil War. Jackson saw the rout before him, 
and straightway formed his line of battle on the hill, 
extending from the Robinson house to the Henry house. 

Seeing Jackson standing calm and stern before his 
troops. Bee galloped up to him, and in a tone of agony, 
cried : 

" General, see ! They are beating us back." 

*' Very well, sir. We will give them the bayonet," 
was the cool response of the other. 

His words and manner infused new life and hope in 
Bee's mind. Dashing back to his troops, he shouted, 
with fierce gestures: 

" See! See! There stands Jackson, like a stone-wall." 

The men look where he points. The sight of that 
immovable line of disciplined soldiers and the calmly 
self-reliant manner of the great leader calms them a 
little. Just at this juncture, with a clatter of hoofs, 



312 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Beauregard and Johnston come galloping to the scene 
of battle. They try to rally the troops. 

" Carry the standards forward forty yards," com- 
mands Beauregard. It is done. The color sergeant 
and the color guard of each regiment stand boldly out 
on the field of battle amid the storm of lead. " Rally 
upon the colors! " is the cry then, all along the line, 
and soon the shattered ranks began to assume some 
semblance of order. In the meantime Jackson's line 
had advanced somewhat, and the troops of Wade 
Hampton coming to his aid, the advance of the Federal 
columns is checked. Beauregard is now on the field. 
As he galloped up he had ordered all the troops posted 
along the bank of Bull Run to hasten towards the 
firing. Johnston has gone back to hasten them for- 
ward, and the reenforcements begin to pour in. They 
form, under cover of the woods, on the crest of the 
hill back of the Henry and Robinson houses. It is a 
position of great strength. Jackson's brigade lies flat 
on the ground, to avoid the fire of the enemy. Their 
general, disdaining concealment, rides slowly up and 
down the line. "Steady, boys; steady! All's well," 
he says. Out in front are the Confederate batteries 
making deadly play upon the Union lines, seen forming 
in the distance, and suffering terribly from the rapid 
and well-directed fire of Griffin's and Ricketts's bat- 
teries. Beauregard rides down the line. " Colonel 
Walton, do you see the enemy? " says he to the com- 
mander of the Washington Artillery. 

" Yes, sir." 

*' Then hold this position, and the day is ours." 

As he turns to ride away, a shell bursts beneath his 
horse, tearing the animal to pieces, and cutting off a 
piece of the general's boot heel. 

But now McDowell has re-formed his regiments and 
is about to advance. All day long the advantage of 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 313 

numbers and position has been his. Now the enemy 
is his equal in numbers, and is strongly posted at the 
top of a hill up which he will have to charge. Noth- 
ing daunted, he prepares for the assault. His first 
move brings disaster. Ricketts's and Griffin's batteries, 
stationed near the Dogan house, are ordered to move 
across the valley to a point near the Henry house. 
Ricketts and Griffin are officers of the regular army. 
They have schooled themselves to obey orders; but 
when they learn that they are to be supported only by 
two untrained regiments they feel that a mistake has 
been made. But, without protest, they move to the 
post assigned them, and open fire upon the enemy, who 
returns it with equal spirit. Eleven Union guns are 
now engaged with thirteen Confederate guns; but the 
latter are under cover and supported by thousands of 
infantrymen. For a time the exchange of shots con- 
tinues; but soon the Confederates grow bolder, and 
sally out from the woods in quick, but ineffectual 
charges upon the Union guns. Ricketts's battery is 
nearest, and against him the assaults are directed; but 
with well-directed volleys of grape and canister he 
holds his foes at bay. 

Griffin is stationed on Ricketts's right, and is ably 
sustaining his share in the conflict. Suddenly he sees a 
regiment emerge from the woods on the Confederates' 
left and advance boldly toward him. Swinging his 
guns around, he trains them upon the new-comers. 
But they advance with such deliberation, with no cheer- 
ing or firing, that for a moment he fancies they may be 
Union reenforcements. At this moment Major Barry, 
chief of the Union Artillery, gallops up. 

" Captain," he shouts, " don't fire on those troops; 
they are your supports." 

"They are Confederates," cries Griffin; "I know 
they are; they are part of the enemy's forces." 



314 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

" No, no; they are your supports." 

Then Griffin wheels his guns around again and the 
double charges of grape and canister that he had pre- 
pared for the unknown regiment are sent whistling into 
the woods in which the main body of the Confederate 
troops is hidden. Meanwhile the doubtful regiment 
has moved up nearer, swung into a long line facing 
Ricketts and Griffin, halts, and with all deliberation 
levels its muskets and fires a volley at point-blank range 
into the very faces of the Union cannoneers. It is a 
murderous fire. Men and horses fall to the ground 
before the storm of leaden hail. Horses are stung by 
the flying bullets and maddened by the crash of the 
musketry, and gallop away, dragging caissons and lim- 
bers after them. The Zouaves, stationed to support 
the batteries, are thrown into confusion. Their officers 
urge them forward but they hesitate. While they 
waver, the Confederates advance boldly, pouring in 
volleys. A sudden panic seizes upon the Zouaves. 
They break, they Hy in terror, crying that all is lost. 
Some of them pluck up their courage and join other 
commands; but, as a body, the Zouaves are not seen 
on the field of Bull Run again. 

This disaster is directly traceable to Patterson, far 
off in the Shenandoah Valley, for the Confederate 
troops that fired the fatal volley were the troops of 
Kirby Smith, and had just reached the field of battle. 
In the cars they heard the noise of battle, and, stopping 
the train, they had run down the turnpike and across 
the fields towards the sound of the cannonading. With- 
out reporting to Beauregard, or asking for orders, they 
sought the field of battle and arrived in time to deal the 
decisive blow. 

There is no incident in the battle of Bull Run that 
can be definitely termed the moment of defeat. No 
successful charge by the Confederates, nor great dis- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 315 

aster to the Federals, was instantly followed by the 
rout of the latter. But toward four o'clock in the 
afternoon, an hour or more after the disaster to 
Ricketts and Griffin, the Union army began to go to 
pieces. Men left the ranks and went coolly to the 
rear. Half-disciplined regiments charged magnifi- 
cently up the hill, but when driven back thought their 
whole duty done and quietly withdrew. " At four 
o'clock," says a Union officer, " there were more than 
twelve thousand volunteers on the battle-field of Bull 
Run who had entirely lost their regimental organiza- 
tion. They could no longer be handled as troops, for 
the officers and men were not together. Men and 
officers mingled together promiscuously; and it is 
worthy of remark that this disorganization did not 
result from defeat or fear." 

Crowds of civilians, members of Congress, govern- 
ment officials, newspaper correspondents, and curiosity- 
seekers had followed the army from Washington, eager 
to witness the battle. Few of these had ventured so 
far as the battle field, but thousands of them were in 
the fields and along the road leading to the stone bridge. 
The road was choked up with pleasure-carriages and 
with army-wagons. As the stragglers began swarming 
across the fords of Bull Run, dirty, grimed with 
powder, their faces telling of disaster, a feeling of 
vague alarm spread amongst the crowd of sight-seers. 
The contagion spread. Congressmen in carriages 
called to their drivers to whip up their horses and 
hasten back to Washington. Teamsters cut loose their 
horses from the wagons and galloped away. Even 
ambulances, laden with Union wounded, were thus 
abandoned and left standing in the road. Soldiers 
cast away their muskets, photographers their cameras. 

" We have won a great and glorious victory," tele- 
graphed Jefferson Davis, as he surveyed the field after 



3i6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the battle. This was true, but it would have been more 
to the purpose if, instead of exulting, the President 
of the Confederacy had ordered an instant advance on 
Washington. " Give me five thousand fresh men and 
I will be in Washington to-morrow morning," cried ,. 

General Jackson to Davis, but the appeal went un- 11 

heeded. The Federal loss in the battle was killed, 460; 
wounded, 1,124; captured, 1,312; total, 2,896. The 
Confederate loss was killed, 387; wounded, 1,582; 
captured or missing, 13; total, 1,982. Two Confed- 
erate generals, Bartow and Bee, who conferred the 
deathless title of " Stonewall " on Jackson were killed. 
The state of panic in Washington when the defeated 
soldiers came trooping back from the battleground 
almost baffles the imagination. One who saw it, the 
poet Walt Whitman, gifted with a vivid descriptive 
prose style has described it in an article, a part of which 
may well close this chapter: 

The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington, over 
the Long Bridge, at daylight on Monday, 22d — day drizzling all 
through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle (20th, 
2ist) had been parched and hot to an extreme; the dust, the grime 
and smoke, in layers, sweated in, followed by other layers again 
sweated in, absorbed by those excited souls ; their clothes all 
saturated with the clay-powder filling the air, stirred up everywhere 
on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming 
wagons, artillery, etc., — all the men with this coating of murk and 
sweat and rairj, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge, — ■ 
a horrible march of twenty miles, — returning to Washington baffled, 
humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts and the proud 
boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and 
your bands of music, and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? 
Well, there isn't a band playing, and there isn't a flag but clings 
ashamed and lank to its staff. 

The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear, at first sparsely 
and shame-faced enough, then thicker, in the streets of Washing- 
ton, — appear in Pennsylvania Avenue, and on the steps and base- 
ment entrances. They come along in disorderly mobs ; some in 
squads, stragglers, companies. Occasionally, a rare regiment, in 
perfect order, with its officers (some gaps — dead, the true braves) 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 317 

marching in silence, with lowering faces, stern, weary to sinking, 
all black and dirty, but every man with his musket, and stepping 
alive; but these are the exceptions. Sidewalks of Pennsylvania 
Avenue, Fourteenth Street, etc., crowded, jammed with citizens, 
darkies, clerks, everybody, lookers-on ; women in the windows, 
curious expressions upon faces as those swarms of dirt-covered, 
returned soldiers there (Will they never end?) move by; but noth- 
ing said, no comments (half our lookers-on " secesh " of the most 
venomous kind, — they say nothing, but the devil snickers in their 
faces). During the forenoon Washington gets all over motley with 
these defeated soldiers, — queer-looking objects, strange eyes and 
faces, drenched (the steady rain drizzles on all day), and fearfully 
worn, hungry, haggard, blistered in the feet. Good people (but not 
over-many of them either) hurry up something for their grub. 
They put wash-kettles on the fire for soup, for coffee. They set 
tables on the sidewalks ; wagon-loads of bread are purchased, 
swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two ladies, beautiful, the 
first in the city for culture and charm, — they stand with store of 
eating and drink at an improvised table of rough plank, and give 
food, and have the store replenished from their house every half- 
hour all that day ; and there in the rain they stand, active, silent, 
white-haired, and give food, though the tears stream down their 
cheeks, almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the 
deep excitement, crowds, and motion, and desperate eagerness, it 
seems strange to see many, very many, of the soldiers sleeping — in 
the midst of all, sleeping sound. They drop down anywhere, on 
the steps of houses, up close by the basements or fences, on the 
sidewalk, aside on some vacant lot, and deeply sleep. A poor seven- 
teen or eighteen-year-old boy lies there, on the stoop of a grand 
house; he sleeps so calmly, so profoundly. Some clutch their mus- 
kets firmly even in sleep. Some in squads ; comrades, brothers, 
close together — and on them, as they lay, sulkily drips the rain. 



CHAPTER Xni 

The War in the West — Lyon's Fight for Missouri and His Death — 
Grant First Appears — His Capture of Forts Henry and Donel- 
son — Encouragement to the Union Cause. 

Following upon the battle of Bull Run came three 
months of comparative quiet in the main field of battle. 
The wrecked Army of the Potomac had to be patched 
up; the morale of the Northern soldiers reestablished; 
and the too eager press and people of the North shown 
by precept following upon the example of disaster that 
the way to Richmond was not so open as they thought. 
But recruiting was not checked by the defeat, which 
indeed seemed rather to arouse the fighting spirit of 
the North. A camp preacher in Illinois seemed to 
express the sentiment of his neighbors when he read 
the news of the battle from his rude pulpit and ended 
with the declaration, '* Brethren, it is time to adjourn 
this meeting and go home and drill," 

To succeed General McDowell in command of the 
army in Virginia was chosen General George B. Mc- 
Clellan, a West Pointer, an engineer with a genius for 
organization, who had attracted attention by two not 
very important victories won in West Virginia in the 
course of holding that state for the Union. Eight 
months were passed in the work of reorganization and 
building up of the Army of the Potomac, during which 
period only unimportant battles were fought in the 
eastern theatre of war. 

It was during this period, however, that General 
Lyon was most active in his fight for Missouri. Early 
In the trouble he had effectively disarmed the Confed- 

3i8 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 319 

erates of the state by seizing the arsenal and raiding 
their only armed camp. But the sentiment of the state 
was strongly secession, and if the movement lacked 
arms it did not lack men. In response to a call sent 
out by General S. G. Price seven or eight thousand 
men gathered at Cowskin Prairie in the southwestern 
part of the state. They had no regular arms. Some 
had hunting rifles, others shot-guns. Several thousand 
had no guns whatsoever. There were seven cannon 
but no cartridges. " My first cartridge resembled a 
turnip rather than the trim cylinders from Federal 
arsenals and would not take a gun on any terms," 
wrote an artillery officer who undertook to teach the 
men to make cartridges from homely materials. There 
were no uniforms. A bit of bright calico knotted about 
the arm was the common badge of rank. Price's adju- 
tant-general described the troops thus: 

The staff was composed chiefly of country lawyers, who took 
the ways of the court-room with them into the field. Colonels could 
not drill their regiments, nor captains their companies; a drum and 
a fife — the only ones in the entire command — sounded all the calls, 
and companies were paraded by the sergeants calling out, " Oh, yes ! 
Oh, yes ! all you who belong to Captain Brown's company fall in 
here." Officers and men messed together, and all approached Mc- 
Bride without a salute, lounged around his quarters, listened to all 
that was said, and when they spoke to him called him "Jedge." 
Their only arms were the rifles with which they hunted the squirrels 
and other small game that abounded in their woods ; but these they 
knew how to use. A powder-horn, a cap-pouch, " a string of 
patchin'," and a hunter's knife completed their equipment. I doubt 
whether among them all was a man who had seen a piece of 
artillery. 

General Lyon and General Franz Sigel, of the Fed- 
eral army, were at Springfield, Missouri, with about five 
thousand men, but better armed and equipped than the 
Confederates. Price by joining his force with that of 
General Ben McCulloch had brought his available 
force up nearly to ten thousand men. It was Lyon's 



320 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tactics, obviously, to attack, tliis force before it could 
be fully armed, effectively drilled, and made into an 
efficient army. The Confederates, on their part, know- 
ing that they were ill-armed and that their one point 
of superiority was in numbers, determined to attack 
Lyon before he could be reenforced. By a curious 
coincidence, the foes selected the same day, August 9, 
for their attacks — but Lyon attacked at daybreak just 
as the Confederates were breakfasting preparatory to 
taking the field themselves. 

The surprise was complete. At first the success of 
the Union forces seemed assured, but a large Confed- 
erate force by a strategem succeeded in trapping Sigel 
into the belief that they were part of Lyon's force, 
and getting into a commanding position, fairly blew his 
line to pieces. Sigel with 300 men fled, leaving 900 
men and 5 cannon behind. Lyon's plan of battle 
had been to divide his forces — always a dangerous ex- 
pedient — sending Sigel to take the Confederates in the 
rear. He heard the distant sound of conflict and thus 
knew Sigel was engaged, but had no knowledge of 
the disaster that had befallen him. He himself fought 
bravely, though wounded early in the battle. The 
Federals, spurred on by his courage, were holding their 
own against a superior force when a bullet struck him 
dead. The fall of a commander always disheartens 
his troops, and the Union soldiers now looked with 
apprehension upon the Confederates who had with- 
drawn to prepare for another charge. Just then the 
trick that had been played upon Sigel was repeated 
upon Lyon's men. A Confederate force bearing the 
Stars and Stripes approached unopposed, for all sup- 
posed them part of Sigel's command. At the critical 
moment, however, the national flag was thrown down 
and the new troops charged the Union lines, while a 
battery made up of guns taken from Sigel swung into 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 321 

action. The shock was too much for the Union troops. 
Though they repelled that charge they then abandoned 
the field and retreated to Springfield. Their loss had 
been less than the Confederates, but their force was 
little more than half as great. The official figures 
of losses are: For the Federals, 223 killed, 721 
wounded, and 291 missing; for the Confederates, 265 
killed, 800 wounded, and 30 missing. But the death 
of General Lyon was the greatest loss of all. The 
vigor with which he had acted at the very first mutter- 
ing of civil war was the one force that saved Missouri 
to the Union. 

One other affair in Missouri during this year is of 
interest as introducing to the active prosecution of the 
war the officer who was destined to become the chief 
general on the Union side. 

The Confederates had a strong military post at 
Columbus, Kentucky, on the bank of the Mississippi, 
under command of General Polk, who had been a 
Bishop in the Episcopal Church, General Fremont, 
who was in command of Missouri, was very apprehen- 
sive lest they send over troops to reenforce General 
Price. Accordingly he ordered Brigadier-General U. 
S. Grant, who was at Cairo, Illinois, to make some sort 
of an attack which would keep the Confederates busy. 
To attack Columbus would have been folly for there 
were ten thousand men there in a well-fortified camp. 
But on the Missouri side, at Belmont, a miserable 
little hamlet, there was a small detachment in an un- 
fortified camp, and putting about three thousand men 
and two guns on river steamboats Grant started for 
that point. When he landed three miles above the 
camp two armored gunboats dropped down stream 
and began shelling the works at Columbus to keep the 
enemy interested there. 

Four hours of fighting followed the first collision 



322 STORY OP OUR ARMY 

of the hostile skirmishers. Through the woods the 
blue-coats advanced slowly, but without serious check. 
There was no open country, and there could be no 
charges; but the fighting was cool and deadly. "I 
never saw a battle more hotly contested, or where 
troops behaved with more gallantry," said Grant, in 
his report, next day. Many were struck down in the 
woods by the flying bullets. Grant's horse was shot 
under him. But the Union troops pressed on until at 
last the edge of the clearing about the camp was reached. 
Then the Confederates broke and fled, plunging over 
the steep bank of the river, huddling together on the 
sands underneath, panic-stricken, and ready to surren- 
der at the first summons. 

But no demand for surrender was made. The 
Union soldiers, who had fought like veterans, showed 
that they were but raw recruits in the moment of vic- 
tory. When they saw the Confederate camp deserted 
they broke through the abatis by which it was sur- 
rounded, and at once gave themselves up to plunder 
and self-glorification. The younger officers were as 
bad as the men. From the backs of their horses they 
made speeches boasting of victory, and glorifying the 
Union cause, whenever they could muster a corporal's 
guard to listen. Meantime the privates were ransack- 
ing the tents, breaking open trunks, and appropriating 
everything upon which they could lay their hands. 
One group of men had got hold of some captured 
cannon, and were furiously cannonading some steamers 
lying at a wharf down stream, far out of range. Up 
stream, within cannon-shot, were two steamers black 
with armed soldiery, coming over to cut off the Union 
retreat. Galloping up to the group, Grant directed 
them to turn their guns upon the loaded steamers; 
but their excitement was so great that they paid not 
the slightest head to him. Thereupon he ordered 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 323 

his staff officers to set fire to the camp, which was 
quickly done. The flames and the shells from the 
enemy's works across the river, which now began to 
drop rather thickly into the camp, brought the de- 
moralized soldiers to their senses. As they looked 
about them they saw that the Confederates had re- 
formed their shattered ranks, and taken a position 
between the Union forces and the transports. 

"We are surrounded!" was the cry. To the un- 
trained soldiers the thought of being surrounded was 
equivalent to defeat. 

"We cut our way in here," said General Grant, 
*' and can cut our way out again." 

Accordingly the lines were formed. The Confed- 
erates gave way, and before the reenforcements from 
Columbus had landed, the Federals had safely reached 
their boats. 

Reaching the landing-place Grant found his troops 
all embarked, and the steamers in the act of pushing 
off. Close behind him came the enemy, their bullets 
whistling overhead, and their shouts ringing in his 
ears. He was on the crest of the high bank of the 
river, an almost perpendicular bank of clay, at the 
foot of which was a level stretch of sand, across which 
he must ride to reach the edge of the water. The 
captain of the nearest boat which had pushed out ran 
a single plank ashore, and shouted to him to hasten. 
" My horse seemed to take in the situation," writes 
Grant, in his " Memoirs." " There was no path down 
the bank, and everyone acquainted with the Missis- 
sippi River knows that its banks in a natural state do 
not vary at any great angle from the perpendicular. 
My horse put his fore feet over the bank without 
hesitation or urging, and with his hind feet well under 
him slid down the bank and trotted aboard the boat, 
twelve or fifteen feet away, over a single gang-plank." 



324 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Though the forces engaged were Inconsiderable, 
Belmont was a sharp-fought battle. The Union 
armies lost in all 607 men; of whom 120 were killed, 
383 wounded, and 104 captured or missing. The 
Confederate loss amounted to 641 ; of whom 105 were 
killed, 419 wounded, and 117 missing. 

After the battle of Belmont the commanding officers 
of the hostile armies, with their staffs, exchanged sev- 
eral visits to arrange the details of paroles, exchange 
of prisoners, and such matters. On one of these visits 
Colonel Buford, of Grant's staff, with several other 
Union officers, was the guest of General Polk. Lunch- 
eon was served. The wine was passed around. 
" Gentlemen," said Colonel Buford, looking slyly at the 
Confederate officers, *' let us drink to George Wash- 
ington, the Father of his Country." " And the first 
Rebel," quickly added General Polk, and the toast 
thus amended was drunk by all In amity. 

A little later. General Cheatham, Polk's second In 
command, and General Grant got Into a conversation 
about horses, of which both were very fond. For an 
hour or more they chatted amicably. At last the time 
came to part. 

*' Well, general," said the Southerner, " this business 
of fighting is a troublesome affair. Let us settle our 
political differences by a grand horse-race over on the 
Missouri shore." 

" I wish we could," responded Grant; and, soldier 
though he was, he probably would have liked to bring 
the war to an end then and there. 

The battle of Belmont was of but slight Importance 
save as Introducing General Grant to active military 
operations. He was not long In following up the 
Introduction. Kentucky, which had tried to be neutral, 
had not long been able to maintain that position. By 
the beginning of the year 1862 both the Federals 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 325 

and the Confederates were maintaining powerful posts 
within her borders. In command of the latter was 
General Albert Sidney Johnston, a military commander 
of the first order, who had in all about forty-three 
thousand men to hold a line reaching from Columbus 
on the Mississippi to Cumberland Gap, His force 
was not only inadequate but was ill-armed, many of 
his soldiers carrying squirrel rifles, shot-guns, and 
even flint-locks The Federals had a slight advantage 
in numbers and a great one in equipment. They had, 
moreover, a considerable fleet of gunboats, some of 
them armored, with which to carry the war by water 
into the enemy's country. In the west the rivers 
south of the Ohio mainly run north and south, thus 
forming roads into the territory then held by the Con- 
federates. In the east they run east and west and 
thus were obstacles in the path of the Union armies 
marching southward. The superior position of the 
Union forces in Kentucky was somewhat affected by 
an unfortunate division in command. General Hal- 
leck, in chief command in Missouri, included in his 
department all of Kentucky west of the Cumberland 
River; General Buell, with headquarters at Louisville, 
commanded the rest. 

Shortly after the battle of Belmont General Grant 
began urging upon Halleck expeditions up the Cum- 
berland and Tennessee rivers to capture Forts Donel- 
son and Henry that stood upon their banks. These 
forts were in the rear of Johnston's line of defence 
and, if taken, would compel him to abandon such 
strong points as Bowling Green and Columbus. Hal- 
leck finally assenting, Grant left Cairo, February 2, 
1862, to attack Fort Henry. He had under his com- 
mand seventeen thousand men, but as there were not 
enough steamboats to carry all, half were taken to 
a point a few miles below the fort and landed while 



326 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the boats went back for the rest. With the expedition 
were also several iron-clad gunboats under Commodore 
Foote. 

Fort Henry was a powerful worlc so placed as to 
be untenable at high water. How the Confederate 
engineers could have so blundered in placing a fort 
which in all other elements of technical design was 
admirable is inexplicable. At the very time Grant 
attacked it its flag-staff stood in two feet of water 
and the river was rising. Even before the Federal 
expedition appeared down the river General Tilgh- 
man, in command of the fort, had very properly de- 
termined to abandon it. He sent the greater part 
of his command overland to Fort Donelson, only 
twelve miles away, leaving Captain Taylor with fifty- 
four men instructed to hold the fort against all comers 
for an hour. The little band fought well. They had 
only the gunboats to deal with for Grant's troops 
never got into this fight at all. The shells from the 
heavy naval guns searched out every part of the fort, 
piercing the breastworks as though they were paste- 
board. One lucky shot from the fort pierced the 
boiler of the " Essex," scalding many of her men, 
forcing scores to jump overboard and sending her out 
of action. 

But, though encouraged for the time by the sight 
of the disaster on the " Essex," the garrison of the 
fort soon saw the futility of longer resistance. Their 
one rifled cannon had burst, striking down all the 
gunners who served it, and disabling the guns on either 
aide. The heavy Columbiad had been accidentally 
spiked with its own priming-wire. The Federal fire 
had dismounted so many other guns as to leave but 
four fit for use. Many of the buildings in the fort 
were on fire, the waters of the river were creeping 
higher and higher, threatening to drown the magazine, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 327 

and all the time the gunboats stubbornly breasted the 
fierce current of the Tennessee, and swept the fort 
with their screeching, bursting shells. " It is vain to 
fight longer," said General Tilghman, who had re- 
turned to the fort after having seen his troops safely 
started on the road to Donelson. " Our gunners are 
disabled — our guns dismounted; we can't hold out five 
minutes longer." Then the Stars and Bars of the 
Confederacy came fluttering down from the flag-staff, 
and in a moment the blue-jackets on the gunboats were 
cheering lustily over their victory. It is worthy of 
note, that when a cutter was sent off from the flag- 
ship to receive the formal surrender, the water had 
risen so high that the boat pulled directly to the sally- 
port over ground on which the day before the Con- 
federate garrison had marched. Had the attack been 
deferred two days, the Tennessee River would have 
saved the Union forces their trouble by drowning 
out the garrison. 

The capture of Fort Henry was no very extraord- 
inary military exploit. General Grant did not himself 
anticipate any considerable difl'iculty in it, expecting 
that the fleet would reduce the works and only hoping 
to use his own forces to capture the garrison — a wish 
which General Tilghman frustrated by withdrawing 
nearly all his men before the attack began. But the 
victory stirred the riotous enthusiasm of the entire 
North, for it sounded greater than it really was. It 
was the first Confederate fort to fall into Federal 
hands. It had its effect on the enemy too, for Gen- 
eral Johnston on hearing the news abandoned Bowling 
Green, sent twelve thousand of his troops to Fort 
Donelson and with the rest, about fourteen thousand, 
retreated into Tennessee. Within a week Grant was 
on the way to attack the second Confederate strong- 
hold. Meantime the rains had passed over, a bright 



328 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

sunny day or two had been enjoyed and the Northern 
soldiers, confusing Tennessee with the tropics, thought 
they were done with winter and threw away overcoats 
and blankets by thousands — a blunder they were 
destined to regret bitterly. 

A lofty hill at the head of an abrupt bend in the 
Tennessee River had been chosen by the Confederates 
as the site of Fort Donelson. The two water bat- 
teries of the work commanded a long, straight reach 
of water, up which must come any naval expedition 
on hostile errand bent. The fort itself was an irregu- 
larly shaped earthwork, mounting heavy guns, and 
enclosing about one hundred acres of ground. Out- 
side of the fort proper were redoubts of logs, and 
field-works for infantry and artillery. Still farther 
advanced were earthworks faced by a heavy abatis, 
reaching from Hickman's Creek, about a mile below 
the fort, to the little town of Dover, two miles above 
it. Within these formidable works were nearly twenty 
thousand men. Johnston had plainly foreseen the 
Importance of this post to the Confederacy, and had 
hurried thither every man he could spare from his 
position at Bowling Green. " I determined," he said, 
" to fight for Nashville at Donelson, and to have the 
best part of my army to do it." But Johnston's fatal 
error was made when he sent, to command this fort, 
General Floyd, whose treasonable actions when secre- 
tary of war under Buchanan had shown him to be 
destitute of that first of all soldierly qualities, honor. 
A great commander has said: " Better an army of 
hares led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a 
hare." General Grant himself has placed on record 
the statement that, knowing Floyd's character, he at- 
tempted manoeuvres that he would have never under- 
taken had Buckner (third in command at Fort Donel- 
son) been in command. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 329 

The advance was made by two parallel roads, Gen- 
eral McClernand commanding one division, General 
Smith the other, both West Pointers. They reached 
the picket lines of the enemy about sundown, and 
bivouacked without any clash. Indeed, the next day 
Grant ordered that nothing should be done that would 
bring on a general engagement, but General McCler- 
nand was so badgered by an apparently unsupported 
battery that in wrath he sent three regiments to take 
it. It turned out that the the battery was surrounded 
by concealed rifle-pits and masked earthworks. The 
three charging regiments found themselves pitted 
against five — plus the battery itself. Badly cut up 
they rallied, charged a second and then a third time 
and gave up the fight. Many wounded were left on 
the field and the dried leaves and grass taking fire 
threatened them with an agonizing death. Nobody 
seemed to think of a flag of truce for their removal, 
but the Confederates clambered over their breast- 
works and carried many back to safety. 

Grant did not expect to fight a pitched engagement. 
His plan was to hem in the enemy, and while the gun- 
boats pounded them from the water side draw tight 
his circle of fire and steel until they should be starved 
into surrender or shatter themselves to pieces in dash- 
ing against his lines. But the Confederates changed 
all this, and had they acted wisely in their moment of 
temporary victory Grant might have been defeated, 
or at most have won only an empty fort. 

That night a council of war met in Floyd's head- 
quarters in Donelson. Pillow was there, and Buck- 
ner. 

" We must cut our way out through Grant's line 
to-morrow morning," said Floyd. " This fort can- 
not be defended with less than fifty thousand men. 
We will attack McClernand's division, rout it, and 



330 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

then either continue the attack upon the main army, 
or retreat by the Charlotte road." 

All that night within the Confederate lines there 
were regiments of infantry, troops of cavalry, and bat- 
teries of artillery marching toward the Confederate 
left, until ten thousand men were massed near the 
point at which the Charlotte road pierces the line of 
earthworks. Outside, the Federal pickets were stamp- 
ing about, swinging their arms, and more intent upon 
fighting back the numbing effects of the biting blast 
than alert to catch the sound of activity within the 
enemy's lines. 

Morning came; reveille sounded; the blanketed 
forms that lay on the snow began to show signs of 
life. Suddenly from the picket line came a shot, — 
another, — a whole fusillade. Men spring to their feet, 
catch up their guns, and begin to fall in line. The 
harsh roll of the drums mingles with the firing, that 
comes faster and faster from the pickets. Company 
after company is formed and breaks into column of 
fours, starting out on the double-quick to learn whether 
this was simply a skirmish on the picket line or the 
forerunner of a general engagement. 

It is Oglesby's regiment of Illinoisians, that has 
been set upon by Pillow. Right valiantly they hold 
their ground. To their aid comes McArthur, and 
soon the whole of McClernand's division is engaged. 

Meantime General Grant has gone off to the gun- 
boat *' St. Louis " to confer with Commodore Foote, 
who had been wounded in the river battle of the day 
before. As he rode down toward the river's bank 
he heard the noise of the conflict on his extreme right, 
but thought it nothing more than a lively skirmish. 
*' I had no idea that there would be an engagement 
on land unless I brought it on myself," he writes, in 
his " Memoirs." 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 331 

For an hour or more the conflict rages without in- 
termission. Could one from some elevated point look 
down through the dense gray clouds of smoke that 
conceal the battle from view, he would see that the 
day is going against the Federals. On all sides they 
are being beaten back. Their ammunition has given 
out, and whole companies have ceased firing and sought 
shelter. Meantime the fury of the enemy's assault 
has in no way waned. His well-drilled regiments 
and batteries keep up a constant fire as they advance 
through the woods. The clouds of sulphurous smoke, 
the sheets of lurid flame leaping from the muzzles of 
the guns, the thunders of the cannonade, the shouts 
of the combatants, and the cries of the wounded tell 
of the desperate conflict that is raging. 

By noon McClernand's division has been thrown 
into almost hopeless confusion. Buckner has issued 
from the centre of the Confederate works, and com- 
pletes on the left of the division the work begun by 
Pillow on the right. The road to Charlotte is open 
to the Confederates if they see fit to carry out the 
programme determined upon at the council of the 
night before. But the madness of conquest is upon 
Pillow. All the morning the success of his regiments 
has been uninterrupted. He fancies that he can now 
fall upon and annihilate Grant's entire army. Ig- 
noring altogether his superior oflicer. General Floyd, 
he sends off to General Johnston a hasty despatch, de- 
claring *' on the honor of a soldier " that the day is 
theirs. Then, ordering Buckner to press down upon 
Lew Wallace's right, he resumes the conflict. 

Now is, indeed, the critical moment for the Union 
cause. McClernand's division is demoralized. Cruft's 
brigade, which Lew Wallace sent to its support, has 
been beaten back. Grant, the master-mind, is absent 
from the scene of battle, and the exultant Confed- 



332 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

erates, flushed with victory, press down upon Wal- 
lace's division, which now stands alone between the 
Union army and defeat. 

At this moment General Grant rides up to the little 
group that stands at Lew Wallace's side. He had 
come ashore, not expecting to find a battle raging, but 
was met at the landing by Captain Hillyer, who told 
him of the morning's disaster. Together they gal- 
loped up the line to the scene of the conflict. 

'* I saw the men standing in knots, talking in the 
most excited manner," he writes, in his " Memoirs " ; 
" no officers seemed to be giving any directions. The 
soldiers had their muskets, but no ammunition, while 
there were tons of it close at hand. I heard some 
of the men say that the enemy had come out with 
knapsacks and haversacks filled with rations. They 
seemed to think that this indicated a determination 
on his part to stay out and fight just as long as the 
provisions held out." 

But Grant, the trained soldier, does not accept this 
theory. He knows that the knapsacks full of rations 
betoken that the enemy intends to make a march, — a 
retreat. Wallace briefly tells him of the disaster on 
the right; how McClernand has been cut to pieces 
and a road opened for the enemy's escape. With 
scarce a moment's consideration General Grant's resolu- 
tion is formed. 

" Gentlemen, the position on the right must be re- 
taken," he said. Then to Colonel Webster: "Some 
of our men are pretty badly demoralized; but the 
enemy must be more so, for he has attempted to force 
his way out, but has fallen back; the one who attacks 
first now will be victorious, and the enemy will have 
to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of me." 

General Smith determines to lead the charge him- 
self. Lanman's brigade of Iowa and Indiana men 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 333 

is to bear the brunt of the assault. The great guns 
of the batteries thunder behind them as they fall in 
line in the meadow at the foot of the slope. On 
either flank of the long line are companies of Birge's 
sharpshooters, who are to keep up a fusillade as the 
storming party climbs the hill. Scarcely had the brigade 
appeared upon the meadow, when the enemy divines its 
purpose, and begins a furious cannonade. Musket-ball 
and rifle-bullet, shrapnel and grapeshot, pour upon the 
assailants. "Forward!" Is the word; and without a 
cheer, with set faces and quick-beating hearts, the 
Federals move out into the field so swept by flying shot 
that one soldier said afterwards, " The bullets seemed 
too thick for a rabbit to go through alive," 

Directly In front of the centre of the line rode 
General Smith. He was a noble sight. Erect and 
soldierly he bestrode his horse, his gray hair floating 
in the breeze, his right hand grasping a sabre, and his 
left gripping firmly the reins that hold his frightened 
steed in control. In advance of his line, the one 
mounted man upon the slope, he was of course a con- 
spicuous target for sharpshooters, and the bullets 
whizzed thick about him. By no sign does he show 
any comprehension of his position. He sits his horse 
as rigidly as though on parade, and from time to 
time glances back at the waving line behind him, as 
though to critically examine its alignment. " I was 
nearly scared to death," said a soldier who followed 
Smith that day, *' but I saw the old man's white 
mustache over his shoulder, and went on." 

So onward up the hill moves the slender line of 
blue. Gaps begin to appear in it, and to disappear 
at the gruff " Close up, men; close up! " of the officers. 
It Is a command that has to be repeated very often. 
Behind the advancing line the ground is dotted with 
blue-clad forms, — officers and soldiers struck down by 



334 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the leaden hail from the rifle-pits at the summit. Now 
the abatis is reached. Great trunks of trees, the 
branches cut short and sharpened, and so twisted and 
intwined together as to make a kind of infernal hedge, 
bars the advance of the soldiers. The enemy's fire 
quickens as this point is reached. The lads in blue 
begin to despair. " We can never get through that 
barrier under this murderous fire," they think. Signs 
of wavering appear in the line. Over his shoulder 
glances the grim, gray general. He sees the signs of 
weakness. "No flinching now, my lads! Here, this 
is the way; come on!" And so crying, he puts his 
cap on the point of his sword, raises it high In air, 
and picks his way through the jagged timber. Men 
would be less than mortal were their blood not stirred 
by the sight of that bare, gray head leading them on 
so dauntlessly. After him they rush, break through 
the barricade, and form — though somewhat raggedly 
— on the other side. Now the day is nearly won. 
But fifteen or twenty yards more have to be travelled, 
and in a few seconds, with a cheer, the blue-coats 
swarm over the breastworks and drive the Confed- 
erates from rifle-pits and trenches to their inner line of 
defence. And this position, so valiantly won, is held, 
although Buckner himself comes determined to beat 
back the enemy who have thus pierced his outer works. 
This assault has been made by the light of the set- 
ting sun. When darkness settles over the scene, the 
Confederates find themselves in hopeless flight. After 
a long day of gallant fighting they have in no wise 
improved their position. On their right the Federals 
have secured a lodgment within their lines; on the 
left the road which Pillow had wrested from McCIer- 
nand in the morning had been closed again by Wal- 
lace's advance in the afternoon. Right bitterly did 
they condemn the folly which led Pillow to allow 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 335 

the army to be cooped up again after he had opened 
an avenue of escape. More bitter still would have 
been their reproaches could they have known that his 
braggart despatch of the morning had been flashed 
all over the Confederacy, and in all parts of the 
fair Southland the people were rejoicing in the victory 
won by their soldiers at Fort Donelson. 

That night a council of war was held at the Con- 
federate headquarters. It was clear that the fort and 
its army of twenty thousand men must be surrendered. 
But Floyd dared not surrender. He had been United 
States Secretary of War, was charged with treason, and 
feared the Federals would hang him if they caught 
him. Finally Buckner accepted the unwelcome task 
while his two superior officers, Floyd and Pillow, fled 
with a few cavalry by a path impassable for the in- 
fantry and still unblocked by the Federals. In re- 
sponse to Buckner's inquiry as to terms of surrender 
Grant sent the curt reply with which his name was 
long identified — " No terms except an immediate and 
unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose 
to move immediately upon your works." Necessarily 
these " ungenerous and unchivalric terms," as Buckner 
termed them, were agreed to and the victor became 
known as " Unconditional Surrender Grant " until his 
greater deeds later in the war dimmed the remem- 
brance of Fort Donelson. 

About 11,500 men and forty cannon were lost to 
the Confederacy by this action. Following quickly 
on the loss of Fort Henry it disheartened and de- 
pressed the people of the South cruelly, and corre- 
spondingly elated the North. It opened all Tennessee 
to the Union arms, put Johnston's army in full retreat 
after eliminating one-fourth of it, and for the moment 
led the exultant North to fancy that the end of the 
war was in sight. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The War in the East — Operations by Sea and the Capture of New 
Orleans — Battle of Ball's Bluff — General McClellan in Command 
of the Army of the Potomac — Opening of the Peninsular Cam- 
paign — Battle of Seven Pines. 

The course of the war in the East, for many long 
months after the disaster at Bull Run, had in it very 
little to fire the Northern heart. While Grant was fight- 
ing McClellan was drilling. While the news from Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee was of victories and stubborn ad- 
vances, that from Virginia was " All quiet along the 
Potomac to-night." The nation growled restlessly, 
impatient for action. President Lincoln said quaintly, 
*' If General McClellan doesn't want to use that army, 
I'd like to borrow it." But the general convinced that 
it was better to be prepared first than to be sorry after- 
wards, and determined that no Bull Run should inter- 
rupt his career, went patiently on moulding the Army 
of the Potomac into proper form. Too patiently 
thought miany people then, but historians are not sure 
now. Certainly when the army was put under other 
command and marched forward, it did not advance 
to immediate victories. 

There was fighting, of course, of a sort while the 
great army lay quiet. In West Virginia a half a 
dozen small battles effectually destroyed any lingering 
shadow of Confederate authority in the state. Far 
to the south in Mobile Bay the Confederates made 
an ineffectual attempt to take Fort Pickens. Up and 
down the Atlantic coast the Federal warships were 
going, reducing the Confederate forts at Hatteras 
Inlet, at the Island of Roanoke, and at Beaufort. In 

336 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 337 

• 
these expeditions by sea the army had a share, though 

not a glorious one — its part being chiefly to garrison 
the forts which the navy had captured. The expedi- 
tion against the forts at Hatteras Inlet was notable 
for its size and the curious character of the vessels that 
transported it. The war demands had swept Northern 
harbors pretty clear of real sea-going craft and Burn- 
side's fifteen thousand men were towed along in canal 
boats, barges, ferry and tug boats, and coasting 
schooners. Eighty vessels in all made up the strange 
armada which sailed from Hampton Roads on the 
iith of January, 1862. The voyage was short, and 
the weather happily propitious. One ship indeed, 
being wholly unseaworthy, foundered, carrying down 
with her one hundred horses, and another ran ashore 
and was a total loss, with a great quantity of arms 
and ammunition. It was well into February before 
the troops were all disembarked. The Confederates 
had a number of small forts on Roanoke Island 
which, on the 7th of February, the naval vessels en- 
gaged, while the soldiers waded ashore from trans- 
ports that could not approach closer to the beach than 
fifty yards. The bottom was of soft ooze in which 
men sank up to their thights. The season was Febru- 
ary, the time night, and it was a sadly bedraggled 
and chilled army about the campfires when at mid- 
night the entire force was landed. In the morning 
they found that besides his entrenched batteries the 
enemy had quagmires in his front in which the men 
of an advancing line sank up to their waists. Never- 
theless the attack was made, and a wild charge down 
a narrow causeway under a heavy fire won the victory. 
The enemy were driven from Roanoke Island, leaving 
two thousand prisoners and forty guns to the victors. 
Three days later the victorious army put to sea again, this 
time to attack Newberne, North Carolina. As they were 



338 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

embarking they heard the roar of a distant cannonade, 
but it was days before they learned that the brisk 
north breeze had brought to them the thunder of the 
guns in the battle between the " Monitor " and " Mer- 
rimac " in Hampton Roads, eighty miles away. 

The fort at Newberne fell at the first assault. Then 
the advancing army entered the old cotton-planting 
town of Beaufort. Near this spot was Fort Macon, 
too strong to be reduced by fire from the ships, or 
to be carried by assault. The commander declared 
he would not surrender until he had cooked his last 
horse and eaten his last biscuit. Accordingly Burn- 
side settled down to the heavy work of a siege — 
digging parallels, piling sand bags and advancing bat- 
teries until at the end of three weeks, hemmed in by 
land, and continually pounded by the guns of the 
ships in the harbor — the Confederates surrendered. 
It is recorded that most of the horses in the fort were 
still uneaten. 

So the authority of the United States was gradually 
extended southward along the Atlantic coast. Mainly 
it was the work of the navy, but the troops went along 
to hold what was won and often to take a share in the 
winning of it. Wilmington, North Carolina, Charleston, 
and Savannah were the only important Atlantic ports 
remaining under Confederate control. While this end 
was being attained a joint naval and military expedition 
under Admiral Farragut and General Benjamin F. 
Butler had taken New Orleans. This great achieve- 
ment by which the Confederates were deprived of the 
navigation of the Mississippi River, and lost their 
greatest city was wholly the work of the navy,* al- 
though General Butler took twelve thousand men 
down to the Gulf coast. The troops were useful only 

* For an account of it, see " The Story of Our Navy for Young 
Americans," by Willis J. Abbot. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 339 

to occupy the city after the navy had compelled its 
submission. The only glory they won was to receive 
the surrender of the two forts after Farragut had 
made them untenable by capturing New Orleans upon 
which they depended for their supplies. Nor did 
the occupation of New Orleans by Butler redound 
greatly to that officer's credit. True, it was a difficult 
problem he had to confront. The city was over- 
whelmingly pro-secession. There was scarcely a 
household from which some member had not gone 
forth to fight with Lee, or with Beauregard, the idol 
of the Creoles. The temper of the people manifested 
itself in open hostility to the troops, and even in di- 
rect insult to the soldiers on the streets. Butler having 
absolute power — for the city was under martial law — a 
well-developed temper, and an acrid wit, employed all 
three in showing his resentment of the attitude of the 
citizens, with the result of making New Orleans the 
most irreconcilable community in the whole South, 
and Butler, one of the worst hated of men. But so 
far as active work in the field was concerned, Butler's 
force did none. Two small expeditions up the river 
in the direction of Vicksburg were their only signs of 
activity during the summer of 1862. 

At the end of the first year of the war, if we date 
Its beginning from the fall of Fort Sumter, the Fed- 
eral army had sustained one great reverse — the defeat 
at Bull Run — and won one notable victory at Forts 
Henry and Donelson. The navy had reduced the Con- 
federate forts at a dozen points along the Atlantic 
coast, was drawing ever closer the blockade which was 
destined to starve the Confederacy into subjection, and 
had captured New Orleans, the chief commercial city 
of the revolted states. Looking back on the situation 
after fifty years, one can see that it by no means justi- 
fied the charges of lethargy and even cowardice with 



340 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

which the authorities at Washington, and particularly 
General McClellan in command of the Army of the 
Potomac were pursued by the press and the people. 
The Confederacy was bound in a ring of steel which 
was being drawn tighter. But the process was not 
swift enough for the people, and their outcry was 
directed chiefly against General McClellan. Appointed 
originally to command the Army of the Potomac this 
oflicer, on the retirement of General Scott in Novem- 
ber, 1 86 1, was made commander-in-chief. Some inci- 
dents occurred while he held the lesser command that 
disquieted the public and the President. The general 
was always obsessed by the conviction that the enemy's 
force was larger than his own, and allowed General 
Joseph E. Johnston to remain for months in intrench- 
ments at Centreville when Johnston's force was in 
fact less than half the strength of the Union army. 
During this period occurred a disastrous, and useless 
sacrifice of men at Ball's Bluff, on the Potomac. Here 
Colonel Baker, who had resigned his seat as United 
States Senator from California to enter the army, 
marched into a trap in the very first action of his mili- 
tary service and left there his life and his whole regi- 
ment, killed, wounded, or prisoners. With two 
rickety scows he had ferried more than a thousand 
men across the rushing Potomac, never thinking that 
while an army might be thus advanced a few at a time 
when confronted by no foe, it could not be withdrawn 
thus under fire. An officer of another command pass- 
ing by warned him that there were three regiments 
of Confederates coming down from Leesburg. " All 
right," responded Baker, cheerfully. " Don't worry. 
There will be all the more for us to whip." As it 
turned out there were too many. His troops outnum- 
bered, trapped on the edge of a precipitous bluff, slop- 
ing down to a river on which floated only two 









' Patriot rublisUiuy Ti). 

BATTERY No. 4 IN FRONT OF YORK.TOWN 

From "Photographic History of Civil War" 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 341 

Insufficient flatboats, were murderously cut up before 
they surrendered. Twenty-two commissioned officers 
and 710 soldiers were captured. 

The insistence of President Lincoln finally spurred 
General McClellan to action and on the 17th of March 
the movement against Richmond began. The Presi- 
dent wanted the army to go straight across country as 
the crow flies, past the old battle ground at Bull Run, 
and sweeping Johnston out of his works at Centre- 
ville. But McClellan urged that the army be sent 
down to Fortress Monroe and then march up the 
Peninsula between the York and James rivers. By 
taking this line it would avoid crossing rivers in the 
face of the enemy, and would have easy water com- 
munication with its base of supplies, for the rivers 
emptying into Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads 
were under control of the United States navy. Mili- 
tary authorities agree that McClellan's strategy was 
well-planned but badly executed. 

Lincoln's objection to it was the justifiable criticism 
that if the Union army was taken from around Wash- 
ington and set marching up the Virginia Peninsula, 
the Confederate army would be taken from around 
Richmond and comfortably installed in Washington. 
He did not think the exchange a profitable one. This 
criticism was quieted by detaching McDowell with 
forty thousand men from McClellan's army and k^ep 
ing him between the Confederate army and the capit-'.l. 
Washington began to take on the appearance of r, 
thriving seaport. Steamers, schooners, barges, pleas- 
ure-craft, and gunboats crowded the placid waters of 
the Potomac River. A huge army, with tremendous 
troops of horses, thousands of wagons, hundreds of 
heavy cannon, and' of ammunition and sto-es a veri- 
table mountain, had to be moved, and it took a fleet 
to do it. One hundred and twenty thousand men in all 



342 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

were sent to Fortress Monroe. At the outset 
McCIellan had asked for one hundred and forty thou- 
sand, but when fifty-eight thousand had arrived he be- 
gan his march upon Richmond. 

Moving up the Peninsula from Fortress Monroe, 
the village of Yorktown is first passed. Here the 
Confederates had thrown up earthworks, completely 
blocking the road. It was historic ground that the 
Confederates had chosen upon which to dispute the 
right of the Federals to invade Virginia. On that 
very spot the British general, Lord Cornwallis, had 
been hemmed in by Washington and the French allies 
of the American colonies and forced to surrender. 
In 1862, the earthworks behind v/hich crouched the 
Confederate soldiers followed almost exactly the lines 
of the British fortifications of eighty years before. 

In command of the Confederate forces was General 
J. B. Magruder. His line of intrenchments extended 
over twelve miles. He had eleven thousand men to 
defend it. Clearly he was in no condition to resist 
very long the advance of the fifty-eight thousand men 
with whom McCIellan began operations. But Ma- 
gruder's orders were to check as much as possible the 
advance of the Union troops. He did it, and did it 
well. By much marching and countermarching, and 
by mounting large batteries of " quaker " guns where 
he had no real cannon availing, he made a formidable 
showing of force. 

McCIellan, to the astonishment of the enemy, set- 
tled down to a regular siege of works he could have 
carried by assault. The siege lasted just a month, 
when Magruder stole away in the night, having done 
just what he had been ordered to do, namely to delay 
the Union advance. He did not go far. While 
amusing McCIellan at Yorktown, he had been building 
new breastworks at Williamsburg, twelve miles In his 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 343 

rear, and in these his men were comfortably sheltered 
when McClellan's pursuit overtook them. Here they 
apparently determined to stand and fight. General 
Johnston's force, though continually in receipt of re- 
enforcements, was still outnumbered three to one by 
the Union army, but behind breastworks the odds were 
not so unequal. Delay was what the Richmond au- 
thorities wanted and Johnston was there to fight for it. 

The Union forces rushed to the assault as soon as 
they came up to the Confederate works, though it 
was approaching evening and General McClellan was 
not on the ground to direct the battle. The latter was 
a serious handicap. As a result of the lack of any 
general directing head. Hooker's force was engaged 
fiercely with the enemy, while Smith's division on his 
right stood idly by watching the combat but taking no 
part in it, 

" History will not be believed," said " Fighting 
Joe," somewhat bitterly in his report, " when it is told 
that my division were permitted to carry on this un- 
equal struggle from morning until night unaided, in 
the presence of more than thirty thousand of their 
comrades with arms in their hands; nevertheless it is 
true." 

But just as Hooker's troops, completely fatigued 
and wholly discouraged by the indifference of the rest 
of the army, were about to abandon the contest, aid 
came. Phil Kearny, with his division, stationed far 
down the road, heard the sound of battle, A born 
soldier and a veteran of the Mexican War, Kearny 
waited for no orders, but hurried his troops on, past 
Sumner's soldiers standing idle in the road, past 
Smith's division listlessly lounging in the fields, and so 
on to the scene of battle where Hooker was being 
forced back by the Confederates, who advanced across 
the open, Kearny's troops swung into line. A blaze 



344 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of fire and a crash of musketry, and the smoke cleared 
away to show the Confederates wavering. 

"Give them the cold steel, boys!" commanded 
Kearny; and the line pushed stoutly forward, while the 
Confederates fell back before this new foe. But be- 
fore the Federals could press their advantage to a 
victory, darkness settled upon the field and put an end 
to the struggle. 

Meantime the Union forces on the right had acci- 
dentally stumbled upon an important discovery, and 
without a struggle had secured a commanding position 
on the left flank of the Confederate line. 

A countryman had come to Captain Stewart, of 
Smith's division, with the news that the Confederates 
had failed to occupy all the works on their line, and 
that two redoubts, at least, on the left of Fort Magru- 
der were untenanted. Negroes corroborated the story, 
and volunteered to lead a party to the spot. Captain 
Stewart, with four companies, was sent to reconnoitre, 
and soon returned with the news that a redoubt, seem- 
ingly deserted, was seen, but that a deep creek flowed 
before it, spanned only by a narrow bridge on the crest 
of a dam. Scarce four men could walk abreast on the 
dam; and who could tell that batteries and regiments 
were not masked in the woods about the empty re- 
doubt, ready to open a murderous fire upon any troops 
that might try to cross the bridge? 

General Hancock — then hardly known, the hero of 
Gettysburg later, and, still later, when the cruel Civil 
War was long past, a candidate for the presidency of 
the re-United States — was sent with his brigade to take 
possession of the redoubt. When the bridge was 
reached, skirmishers were sent to cross it and search 
the woods on the further shore. At their head 
marched a young lieutenant, George A. Custer. Many 
years later a band of painted Indians fell upon him 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 345 

and the gallant soldiers under his command, and mas- 
sacred them all. But throughout the annals of the 
Civil War we shall see him often. 

Led by Custer, the skirmishers crossed the bridge, 
entered the woods, and scaled the redoubt. All was 
empty. The Confederates had apparently no idea 
that such an earthwork existed. When Hancock 
reached the scene, he discovered another redoubt, some 
half a mile away. This he seized. But when he at- 
tempted yet another advance, he stirred up so vigorous 
a resistance that he sent to Smith for reenforcements, 
and fell back. 

No reenforcements came, but in their place an order 
to retire — to abandon all that he had won. Hancock 
saw the folly of the order, but had no choice but to 
obey. Still, in obeying, he determined to move as 
slowly as possible, hoping that McClellan might reach 
the field and infuse some life and some military skill 
into the Union ranks. But, first of all, he had to pre- 
pare to meet the assault for which he could see the 
Confederates preparing. With a cheer, the long line 
of gray-clad men broke from the woods and came 
sweeping down upon Hancock's one battery and four 
regiments. He fell back across a level plain and down 
a gentle incline, which, for a moment, hid his move- 
ments from the foe. Here he halted and turned about. 
The exultant pursuers came rushing over the crest of 
the hill only to encounter a deadly volley. As 
they wavered, the Union troops swept forward cheer- 
ing; the Confederates broke and fled to the woods. 
It was a fair repulse. " Bull Run ! Bull Run ! " the Con- 
federates had shouted in derision as they saw Hancock 
retreat; but Hancock avenged Bull Run. 

But now the gathering darkness put an end to the 
fighting on this part of the line, as it had in Hooker's 
front. But Hancock did not abandon the position he 



346 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

had won, for by this time McClellan had come gallop- 
ing to the battle field, and gave orders that he should 
hold his ground at any cost. Then he set about pre- 
paring for an assault on the morrow; but when morn- 
ing dawned there was no enemy to attack. Repeating 
the tactics of Yorktown, the Confederates had silently 
stolen away in the night. The Union loss in the battle, 
which is known as the battle of Williamsburg, was 
2,228, while the Confederate loss was hardly half as 
great. 

McClellan now stopped his advance for a time to 
rest his army — a practice to which he was much ad- 
dicted, and for which he incurred general, but perhaps 
unjust condemnation. It was a practice by the way 
to which neither Grant nor Stonewall Jackson was 
much given. His adlvance thus far, however, had 
much disquieted the enemy. His position far up the 
Peninsula made it impossible for the Confederates to 
longer hold Norfolk, and that town was abandoned, 
and the famous iron-clad " Merrimac," which had held 
the James River against all comers, was blown up. 
Thereupon the Federal ships entered the James and 
proceeded up that river to a point within eight miles 
of Richmond, where their farther progress was blocked 
by batteries. McClellan himself was by that time 
not much farther distant from the Confederate capital. 

Then something very like a panic set in among the 
people of the beleaguered city. They were guarded 
by miles of formidable breastworks, with thousands of 
gallant gray-clad soldiers to defend them. They had 
the very flower of the Confederate army commanding 
the troops. Lee was there, and Johnston, the lion- 
hearted, whose only failing, as his chief said, was " a 
bad habit of getting wounded," and " Jeb " Stuart, 
the dashing leader of cavalry. But notwithstanding 
all, the thought of a hostile army within eight miles 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 347 

spread terror in the streets of the city. The records 
of the Confederate government were hastily sent to 
Columbia, South Carolina. The Secretary of War sent 
his family away. The Secretary of the Treasury had a 
train kept in readiness for instant flight. Even Jef- 
ferson Davis himself feared the worst. " Uncle Jeff, 
thinks we had better go to a safer place than Rich- 
mond," wrote his niece in a letter which fell into the 
hands of the Federals. 

The Union army under General McClellan outnum- 
bered the Confederates opposing it by two to one. 
But the general saw a way still further to strengthen 
it. At Fredericksburg, only sixty miles away, was 
McDowell with forty thousand men. This was the 
force that had been left to protect Washington from 
Johnston when the Army of the Potomac sailed away 
for Fortress Monroe. Both McClellan and Presi- 
dent Lincoln thought that McDowell's force might 
be added to the troops before Richmond. Could 
that be done the Confederates would be outnumbered 
three to one. 

The defenders of Richmond were not blind to the 
peril confronting them. General Robert E. Lee was 
by this time in command of all the Confederate ar- 
mies, subject only to the authority of President Davis. 
It is the judgment of history, by the way, that it would 
have been better far for the South had that Presidential 
authority been less often exerted. It was evident 
that the junction of McDowell and McClellan must 
be averted. But how? Opposed to McDowell's 
forty thousand men were but nine thousand Con- 
federates whom he could of course easily sweep 
out of his path The one practicable device 
was to make McDowell so urgently needed 
elsewhere as to end all thought of his joining 
McClellan. This was accomplished by the agency 



348 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of Stonewall Jackson, a general upon whom Lee 
called continually for the most vital services and 
who not once until the day of his death on the battle 
field failed to respond with success. The story of how 
Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, with a numerically 
inferior body of men, kept Washington in terror, tied 
McDowell to his position on the Rappahannock, and 
paralyzed McClellan hundreds of miles away will be 
told in another chapter. It is enough at this moment 
to note that President Lincoln after first promising 
McDowell's aid to McClellan was so worked upon by 
Jackson's menacing attitude that he recalled twenty 
thousand men from the projected Richmond campaign 
to go to the Shenandoah. 

In depriving McClellan of McDowell's aid, the 
President did not mean to give any excuse for delaying 
the attack upon Richmond. " I think the time is 
near," he telegraphed during the last week in May, 
" when you must either attack the enemy or give up 
the job." At the moment McClellan's army was in a 
ticklish situation, astride the Chickahominy River, and 
in a region which constant rains had turned into a 
morass. The position had been taken with the expec- 
tation that one weak point would be filled by 
McDowell. But the news that that commander was 
not coming was known to the Confederates as soon 
as to McClellan, and they met the President's eager- 
ness for a battle by attacking, themselves. 

By the treacherous Chickahominy, subject to sudden 
freshets, the Union army was divided into two parts. 
Three corps — Sumner's, Fitz John Porter's, and Frank- 
lin's — were on the north side of the river. Keyes's 
and Heintzelmann's corps were on the south bank of 
the stream near Richmond. General Johnston being 
well-informed by his scouts of the disposition of the 
Federal forces, determined to sally from his intrench- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 349 

ments, fall upon Keyes and Heintzelmann, and put 
them to rout. 

It is the 31st of May, General Casey's division 
of Keyes's corps is busily engaged in throwing up a 
redoubt on both sides of the Williamsburg road, a 
little over five miles from Richmond. This is the 
very advance guard of the Union army. Behind 
Casey, on the same road, at a point known as Seven 
Pines, is Couch. His position is at the junction of 
two roads, the Williamsburg road and the " Nine-mile 
road." Here stood twin farm-houses, and hard by, a 
grove of seven straight and towering pine-trees, whence 
the spot derived its picturesque name. Couch had a line 
of earthworks at Seven Pines, and the left flank of 
his division extended a mile and a half up the " Nine- 
mile road " to a railway station called Fair Oaks. 

All night the rain had descended in torrents. The 
weary soldiers in Casey's camp lay in the mud, and 
were pelted with the drenching floods of a Southern 
thunder-storm. When dawn came they willingly left 
so uncomfortable a couch, and again set to work on 
their intrenchments. As the morning wore on, Casey 
began to suspect that an attack upon his post was im- 
pending. From the Richmond and York railway, that 
ran from the Confederate city to the front, came a 
constant rumbling of trains as though troops were 
being sent forward. After a time, Casey's scouts 
came in with a prisoner, who proved to be one of 
General Johnston's aides. Though the prisoner bore 
himself with reserve, there was that in his manner 
which confirmed Casey's suspicion, and led him to 
urge on his men in their work. 

Casey's fears were well grounded. The Confed- 
erate army was in full advance upon him. Had Gen- 
eral Johnston's plan been adhered to properly by the 
division commanders, the battle would have already 



350 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

been begun. The three division commanders, Long- 
street, D. H. Hill, and Huger, were to have advanced 
by three roads converging at Seven Pines. But Long- 
street, in some way, misunderstood his orders, and fell 
into the same road with Huger, thereby greatly de- 
laying the advance of that officer's division. There 
was bad generalship at more than one point along the 
Confederate line. Writes an officer who wore the 
gray that day: "A little brook near Richmond was 
greatly swollen, and a long time was wasted crossing it 
on an improvised bridge made of planks, a wagon mid- 
stream serving as a trestle. Over this the division 
passed in single file, you may imagine with what delay. 
If the division commander had given orders for the 
men to sling their cartridge-boxes, haversacks, etc., on 
their muskets, and wade without breaking formation, 
they could have crossed by fours at least, with water 
up to their waists, and hours would have been saved." 

Blunders like this, combined with the fathomless, 
sticky mud of Old Virginia, so delayed the Confederate 
advance that the attack on Casey's outposts was not 
made until noon. 

When the storm burst, it was with fury. First a 
few scattering shots along the picket line, then volleys, 
then the pickets came in on the run. For a few yards 
before Casey's rifle-pits and half-finished redoubt the 
ground was cleared, but beyond that was a dense 
thicket in which the Confederates were moving, com- 
pletely concealed from view. But speedily they burst 
into sight, — a long line with gleaming bayonets and 
waving colors rushing down upon the Federals. 
Casey's guns speak out spitefully. They are loaded 
with grape-shot, and at that short range do fearful 
damage. The musketry fire, too, is deadly, though 
Casey's men are green hands unused to the smell of 
powder. For a time the Confederates are held in 




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FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 351 

check. Then Longstreet comes to the rescue, and 
Casey is taken in the flank. Seeing his peril, he orders 
a charge. Three regiments led by General Naglee 
spring from the earthworks, and with mighty cheers 
rush upon Longstreet's lines, which await not their 
coming but flee to the protection of the woods. Then 
followed an hour of charges and counter-charges. The 
Confederates, when too hotly pressed, took to the 
woods; the Nationals had their breastworks for a 
place of final refuge. But through it all the Confed- 
erates, being in overwhelming numbers, were working 
around on Casey's flank, until at last that oflScer found 
himself in danger of being wholly surrounded. He 
had sent to the rear for aid, but none had come. At 
three o'clock in the afternoon he began to fall back. 
Most of the Union guns were taken away by the re- 
treating soldiers, but seven were so situated that to 
remove them was impossible. Colonel Bailey under- 
took to spike these, but was shot down by the tri- 
umphant Confederates, who swarmed over the breast- 
works as the Federals withdrew. 

The battle had now been in progress for four hours. 
Strange to say, neither of the commanding generals 
knew that it was under way. McClellan was sick in 
his tent at Gaines's Mill, and not until late in the after- 
noon did he hear the cannonading that told of a battle 
being fought. Johnston had accompanied Smith's 
division along " Nine-mile road," intending to attack 
the Federal position at Fair Oaks as soon as he should 
hear the thunder of Longstreet's guns at Seven Pines. 
A fierce storm of wind followed the thunder-shower 
of the night, and bore the sound of battle away from 
Johnston, so that not until four o'clock did he learn 
that the fighting was fierce on his right. When the 
news reached him, however, he was prompt to act 
upon it. Hurling his troops against the Union line 



352 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

at Fair Oaks he pierced it. Then wheeling to the 
right, he sent his troops down the " Nine-mile road," 
to aid Longstreet by taking the Federals at Seven 
Pines in the flank. 

By this time the condition of the Federals begins 
to appear desperate. Nearly all of the troops south 
of the Chickahominy have been brought to the scene 
of battle, but even then they were but eighteen thou- 
sand against thirty thousand of the enemy. Bit by bit 
they have been forced back. First Casey has been 
driven from his advanced position back to Seven Pines. 
Then as Smith's troops came pouring down the " Nine- 
mile road," this position in turn is abandoned for one 
some two miles farther back, where Phil Kearny has 
fortunately thrown up some breastworks. Here they 
make a stubborn stand. Again and again the Con- 
federates dash against that dark-blue line, only to fall 
back shattered like waves against a rocky crag. Up and 
down the Union lines go the officers, exhorting their 
men to be firm and cool, to stand their ground dog- 
gedly, and see that each shot tells. If that position 
is lost, the fate of the eighteen thousand men south of 
the Chickahominy is sealed, and the Peninsular cam- 
paign will end in disaster and disgrace to the Federal 
arms. Let that position be held, and there is still 
hope for success. It is a desperate chance, but the 
boys in blue are making the best of it. 

Heintzelmann's messenger had reached McClellan 
and told him how sore beset were the troops about 
Seven Pines. McClellan speedily sent word to Sum- 
ner to hasten to their assistance, and at two o'clock his 
troops began to cross the bridge. For a time it seemed 
as though the frail structure would not bear the strain 
of marching troops. The turbid tide of the Chicka- 
hominy surged about its piers until they shook in their 
foundations. The corduroy of logs that formed the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 353 

approach to the bridge was under water, the flooring 
of the bridge was afloat, and only kept from drifting 
down the stream by ropes tied to trees upon the shore. 
The " Grape-vine Bridge," was what the soldiers called 
the tottering structure. But frail though it was, it 
served its purpose. 

The bridge once crossed, Sumner's men have a hard 
task before them. Their way lies through a swamp, 
thick grown with trees and bushes, their roots bedded 
in a sticky clay, which clung to the feet of the soldiers 
and wheels of the cannon, making marching well-nigh 
impossible. Imbedded to their axles in this mud, 
many of the guns became immovable. One battery 
alone made the difficult march successfully. Through 
mud and stagnant water the soldiers plodded bravely 
on, and by six o'clock had reached the scene of battle. 

Though surprised and sorely disappointed by the 
appearance of this strong body of fresh troops to aid 
their enemies, the Confederate troops turned their at- 
tention speedily to this new foe. Whiting's brigade 
charged valiantly upon the new-comers, but was driven 
back by a tempest of grape-shot from the guns of 
Kirby's battery, which alone had been freed from the 
clutches of the swamp. Then General Johnston him- 
self rallied about him the strongest brigade of Smith's 
division and led it across the open field, up to the very 
muzzles of the guns that poured out a murderous fire 
all the time. At Bull Run, Johnston had taken some 
of Kirby's guns, and the gunners now set their teeth 
hard, and swore they would die at their posts before 
their cannon should again fall into the hands of the 
Confederate soldier. With fierce energy they loaded 
and fired their pieces. Before the storm of flying lead 
and iron horse and man went down. Johnston was 
hit by a flying bit of shell and fell from his steed. His 
men saw him fall, and wavered. One more volley, 



354 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

and they broke and fell back from the hard-fought 
field. The Union infantry dashed out from its shel- 
tered line in the woods. It swept down the field upon 
the retreating Confederates; they gave way, and for 
the first time that day the tide of victory seemed to 
turn toward the side of the Federals. 

It was an anxious night at the headquarters of each 
army. At five o'clock in the afternoon the Confeder- 
ates had been jubilant. They had carried every posi- 
tion assaulted, they had forced the Federals back 
nearly two miles, they had pierced their enemy's line, 
and complete success seemed certain. Richmond was 
ablaze with enthusiasm over the reported victory. But 
the appearance of Sumner changed all this. How he 
had crossed the Chickahominy none could tell, but that 
the rest of McClellan's army might come to the battle 
field by the same path was more than possible. More- 
over, Johnston's wound had deprived the Southern 
army of its head. Smith, who succeeded to the com- 
mand, could by no means replace him. After con- 
sultation with the chief officers of the Confederate 
government in Richmond, it was determined to with- 
draw the army in the morning. 

Nor were the hearts of the officers about the Union 
campfires much lighter. True, they felt the great 
danger was past, but they had a smarting sense of de- 
feat and disgrace left after the day's fighting. After 
chasing the enemy to his stronghold at Richmond, 
it was hardly creditable to the Federal generalship 
that he should have sallied out and put his pursuers to 
flight. As for the outcome of the morrow's battle, 
none could tell what it might be. 

The story of the second day's battle is quickly told. 
The Confederates made scarcely any resistance to the 
Federal advance, and before noon the Stars and 
Stripes again waved over the positions from which the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 355 

blue-coats had been driven the day before. Sullenly, 
and with heavy hearts, the Confederates made their 
way back to the beleaguered city, from which they had 
so gaily issued on the day before. The Federals 
pressed closely on behind them until within four miles 
of the city. " I have no doubt but we might have 
gone right into Richmond," said General Heintzelmann 
afterwards, and the other commanders of Union divi- 
sions concurred in this opinion. 

Thus ended the battle known variously as the battle 
of Seven Pines or the battle of Fair Oaks. That it 
had not terminated disastrously to the Union arms 
was due chiefly to General Sumner's promptitude, and 
perhaps, somewhat to General Johnston's wound; for 
had that officer been on the field upon the second day 
of battle, the Confederates would have not so tamely 
retreated. Though in some degree indecisive, the bat- 
tle was one of the most hotly contested of the whole 
war. The Union loss, in killed, wounded, and pris- 
oners, amounted to 5,739 men. The Confederate loss 
nearly approached 7,000 men. As not more than 
15,000 men on either side were actually engaged, the 
loss was somewhat unusual. 



CHAPTER XV 

Jackson's Shenandoah Campaign — The Seven Days Before Rich- 
mond — Battle of Mechanicsville — Battle of Malvern Hill — With- 
drawal of the Army of the Potomac. 

For thirty days General McClellan and the Army of 
the Potomac rested so close to Richmond that the 
sound of steam whistles in that city could easily be 
heard in the Union camp. The delay was partly due 
to the need for building roads and bridges across the 
swamps which must be crossed before Richmond could 
be reached, partly to McClellan's constitutional habit 
of delay, and partly to the restless activity of Stonewall 
Jackson in the Valley of the Shenandoah, by which 
the reenforcements promised by Secretary of War 
Stanton to McClellan were diverted from him not 
merely once, but three times. That valley campaign 
can be sketched here only in the broadest and most 
general way. Described in detail, it would be of inter- 
est only to the professional student of military strategy. 
To such students, it has indeed, long been regarded as 
a study fertile in suggestion and instruction. Lord 
Wolseley, commander-in-chief of the British army, 
wrote of Jackson's operations, " These brilliant suc- 
cesses appear to me to be models of the kind both in 
conception and execution. They should be closely 
studied by all officers who wish to learn the art and 
science of war." 

Jackson's task was at first to keep Banks, who com- 
manded the Union forces in the valley, from reenforc- 
ing McClellan when the Army of the Potomac was 
at Centreville. Later, when that army by its march 

356 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 357 

up the Peninsula was menacing Richmond from the 
east, he was relied upon to keep McDowell at Fred- 
ericksburg with forty thousand men from going to 
McClellan's aid. He had for this purpose never 
more than eighteen thousand men, but the greater 
part of the time his effectives averaged about seventy- 
five hundred. What men he had he used so as to lead 
his enemy to think he had thrice his actual numbers. 
His forced marches were the marvel of military annals, 
and by hard trudging over the Virginia roads his men 
earned the name of " Jackson's foot cavalry." 

Four of his favorite maxims give the real gist of 
his military tactics. 

1. "Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the 
enemy if possible. 

2. " To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure 
all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war. 

3. " Never fight against heavy odds, if by any pos- 
sible chance you can hurl your whole force on merely 
a part, and that the weakest part of your enemy, and 
crush it. 

4. *' When you strike him and overcome him, never 
give up the pursuit so long as your men have strength 
to follow; for an enemy routed, if hotly pursued, 
becomes panic-stricken and can be destroyed by half 
their number." 

Putting in practice these maxims. General Jackson, 
between the last of February when Banks with twenty- 
three thousand men entered the valley to undo him, 
until the 17th of June when the Confederate com- 
mander slipped away from the valley and joined 
Johnston in the Chickahominy swamps before Rich- 
mond, menaced, fought, tricked, evaded, and out- 
feneraled the Union commanders so that they were 
ept out of the campaign against Richmond altogether. 

On the 2ist of March, Jackson received word from 



358 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

his ever alert cavalry leader, Ashby, that the Federals 
were withdrawing down the valley. Just what that 
meant, Jackson could not know. What it really did 
mean was that Washington had ordered Banks to de- 
tach most of his troops from the valley, to join 
McDowell and help the advance against Richmond. 
Not knowing this but scenting danger, Jackson marched 
his men forty miles in thirty-six hours, fell upon 
Shields, whom Banks had left to guard the valley, and 
held him in fierce struggle all day. The Confederates 
were beaten, but the purpose of their attack was at- 
tained. Shields could not believe that they would 
have attacked at all unless expecting large reenforce- 
ments and in panic he sent off to Banks for aid. That 
general, who had already passed the Blue Ridge on 
his way to join McDowell turned about and marched 
back. The panic extended to Washington and the 
President took one division away from McClellan and 
sent it to West Virginia, and commanded McDowell 
to abandon his purpose of joining McClellan. At 
this battle of Kernstown the Confederates lost 718 of 
the three thousand men who went into the fight, but 
its worth to the Confederate cause was incalculable. 
There was no disorder in the retreat. " Such was 
their gallantry and high state of discipline," wrote 
General Shields, " that at no time during the battle 
or pursuit did they give way to panic." The plain 
truth appears to be that the men reached the battle 
field so fatigued as to be physically unfit for the con- 
flict. " The men were so utterly broken down," wrote 
an eye-witness, *' and so foot-sore and weary, that if 
they trod on a rock or any irregularity they would 
stagger." 

For a month the two armies in the valley sparred 
continually for time, Jackson moving ba£kward con- 
tinually like a pugilist who keeps his antagonist busy 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 359 

with feints and light blows but steadily refuses a 
serious rally. Banks pursued steadily, not rushing nor 
seeking to bring on a decisive struggle, but keeping his 
skirmishers ever in touch with Jackson's rear-guard. 
Then suddenly Jackson slipped out of the valley, 
through the mountain passes, marching his men often 
thirty miles a day — twelve to fifteen miles is considered 
more than an average day's march. 

" Why is old Jack a greater general than Moses? " 
was one of the stock questions with which his veterans 
quizzed greenhorns. 

" Because it took Moses forty years to march the 
children of Israel through the desert, while old Jack 
would have double-quicked them through in three 
days." 

The Federals thought he was retreating but they had 
scarcely sent off boastful telegrams to Washington 
when he reappeared, reenforced, and attacked all along 
the line — at Staunton, Front Royal, Middletown, and 
finally at Winchester. Jackson himself rode at the 
head of his troops, and coming to the crest of a lofty 
hill near Middletown, saw spread out before him a 
broad and fertile valley. Down the middle of the val- 
ley ran a road, and along that road a long column 
of white-topped wagons, rumbling artillery trains, am- 
bulances, and bodies of cavalry and infantry was slowly 
moving. It was the army of Banks, and Jackson had 
arrived just in time to take it in flank. Hastily the 
artillery was brought into position, and opened a 
deadly fire on the hostile army. The cavalry dashed 
forward to cut off the enemy's retreat. The shells 
from the cannon planted on the hills created the direst 
consternation in the Union ranks. " The turnpike," 
says Jackson, in his report, " which had just before 
teemed with life, presented a most appalling spectacle 
of carnage and destruction. The road was literally 



36o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

obstructed with the mangled and confused mass of 
struggling and dying horses and riders." 

It was but the rear of Banks's army that Jackson had 
thus intercepted. The main body of the army had 
long before passed Middletown on the way to Win- 
chester. As far as the eye could see, along the road 
extended the wagon trains which brought up the rear 
of the army. To capture these was the task of 
Ashby, and with his cavalry and two batteries of ar- 
tillery he set out in hot pursuit. The teamsters strained 
every nerve to take their wagons out of danger. 
Freight was thrown out to lighten the load. The road 
was strewn with guns, knapsacks, oil-cloths, cartridge- 
boxes, haversacks, small-arms, broken-down wagons, 
and dead horses. It was like the scene at the retreat 
from Bull Run. Ashby 's batteries would gallop up 
within a short range of the retreating trains, unlimber, 
pound away at them until they were out of range, lim- 
ber up again, and gallop like mad until once more 
within range. A shell striking a wagon would over- 
turn it, and the road would be at once hopelessly 
blocked for everything in the rear. Before the wreck 
could be cleared away the Confederate troopers would 
be on the ground, and the teamsters would be made 
prisoners. Before that day's work was done the Fed- 
erals had lost a vast quantity of wagons, teams, camp 
equipage, and ammunition, nine thousand stand of 
arms, and three thousand and fifty prisoners. 

The main body of Jackson's troops pressed rapidly 
along the road in pursuit of the enemy. Hundreds 
of abandoned wagons, filled with provisions, sometimes 
overturned or burning, were passed; but the troops had 
no time to stop and feast upon their contents. On 
through Middletown and through Newton the long 
gray column took its way. The people of the vicinity 
were loud in their expressions of friendship for the 



II 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 361 

Confederates. " They seemed ready to embrace every 
soldier," said one of tlie command; " and so it was all 
along the road, bringing to them and forcing on the 
half-starved fellows, as they swept by in pursuit of the 
enemy, pies, bread, pickles, meat, and everything they 
could raise." 

At Winchester the contest was sharp and short. 
At daylight of the 25th of May, the Confederates left 
their camp and began the assault. The Federals held 
a strong position on a lofty hill that completely com- 
manded the city; to drive them from this position was 
the first task of the Confederates, and it was quickly 
accomplished. Then the Federals, seeing the impor- 
tance of the position they had lost, set about retaking 
it. Two Union batteries secured good positions and 
began to pound away at Jackson's line, while a regi- 
ment of sharpshooters found shelter behind a stone 
wall, and with unerring aim began picking off Jack- 
son's cannoneers. One of the Confederate batteries 
was driven back by the persistent fire of the sharp- 
shooters, who shot down the horses and the gunners 
almost as fast as they were exposed. The artillery- 
men turned their guns on the stone wall, and with solid 
shot made the stones fly; but the sharpshooters still 
held their ground, and made the vicinity one of ex- 
treme peril for the men in gray. 

Finding that the Confederates were not to be driven 
away by artillery fire alone, the Federals massed their 
troops for an assault. Jackson prepared to meet them 
half-way. When the shock came, the superiority of 
the Confederates was only too apparent, and the Fed- 
erals did not renew the attack. General Banks, who 
had already concluded that he was hopelessly outnum- 
bered, gave the order to retreat. The line of retreat 
lay through the streets of the town of Winchester, and 
the people were not chary of showing their hatred for 



362 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the blue-coats. " My retreating columns," said Banks, 
in his report, " suffered serious loss in the streets of 
Winchester. Males and females vied with each other 
in increasing the number of their victims by firing from 
the houses, throwing hand-grenades, hot water, and 
missiles of every description." Once out of the streets 
of Winchester the weary soldiers pressed on to the 
northward, scarcely halting until they reached the bank 
of the Potomac River. 

As far as the Potomac the fleeing Union troops were 
pursued. Then the Confederates turned and marched 
back as fast as they could go. Washington was in a 
panic. Fremont and Shields with twenty thousand 
men between them were ordered to make all speed to 
the valley, fall on the rear of the conquering Confeder- 
ate, supposed still to be advancing, and destroy him 
before he could reach the capital. Thus for the second 
time troops making ready to go to McClellan's aid 
were called away to cope with " Old Jack." But 
they reached the valley just too late to take him at a 
disadvantage. Heavy fighting went on for some days 
during which Jackson suffered a heavy loss in the death 
of his chief cavalry leader, Ashby, the man whose skill 
interposed between Jackson's army and the enemy a 
screen of cavalry which effectually hid his sv/ift opera- 
tions. 

Ashby was the beau Ideal of a dashing cavalier. He 
seemed to have no dread of death; he positively 
courted danger. At Bolivar Heights, when his can- 
noneers were shot down, and the enemy with trium- 
phant shouts were rushing forward to capture his guns, 
he sprang from his horse, and with his own hands 
wielded the sponge-staff, and loaded and fired the guns 
until the foe were driven back. At Boteler's Mill, 
when the singing of the bullets made his men uneasy, 
he rode his white horse to the most exposed point, and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 363 

stood there immovable, a model for them to copy. 
On the banks of the Potomac, with eleven men he 
charged a company of one hundred, in a vain attempt 
to rescue his brother, who was killed before his very 
eyes. 

Fremont and Shields were now in Jackson's front, 
but separated. He determined to fall upon Shields 
first and prevent a junction which would have made 
the Union army superior to that of the Confederates. 
But Fremont moved first, fell upon Ewell, Jackson's 
division commander and was beaten. The next morn- 
ing Jackson and Ewell together moved upon Shields. 

It was a little after sunrise that the battle of Port 
Republic began. Shields had taken a strong position, 
his right flank resting upon the river, which at that 
point is so deep and edged with such impassable 
thickets as to completely prevent the passage of 
troops. His left flank rested on a wooded ridge, and 
here, and at other places along the line where slight 
elevations offered advantageous points for artillery, 
heavy batteries were posted. In front of the Union 
line of battle extended a broad field of waving grain. 
Thus strongly posted. Shields awaited the attack. 

The " Stonewall Brigade " led in the assault. 
Proudly, with gleaming bayonets, marching under the 
flag of Virginia, with its brigade commander. General 
Winder and General Jackson riding side by side, it 
advanced. The enemy's pickets were met and driven 
in; but a few yards' further advance brought the 
Virginians in range of the Union batteries. The 
plateau across which the Confederates had to ad- 
vance was swept with grapeshot and bursting shells. 
The men recoiled from the task. The Confederate 
artillery was brought up and turned against the 
Union batteries; but the latter were equipped with 
rifled cannon, and were beyond the range of the 



364 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Confederate smooth-bores. Winder saw that the 
artillery duel was going against him and ordered 
a charge. Gallantly the Virginians pressed forward 
across an unsheltered field, and into the teeth of a mur- 
derous field of shell, canister, and small-arms. Great 
gaps appeared in the lines. Men dropped on every 
side. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, 
and the advancing line first slackened its pace, then 
stood still, and then drifted back, a disorganized, 
broken rabble, to seek shelter in the woods. Then, in 
their turn, the Federals advanced. Infantry and ar- 
tillery came forward on the run. The Confederates, 
disheartened by their reverses, were retreating, when 
Jackson came galloping to the scene. 

"The Stonewell Brigade never retreats 1 " he 
shouted. "Follow me!" 

The sight of their leader and the sound of his 
voice checked the growing panic in the Confederate 
ranks. Gallantly they held their ground. In a mo- 
ment reenforcements came. General Dick Taylor's 
brigade of Louisianians came bursting through the 
woods. Jackson rode up to Taylor and pointed out 
the Union battery, which was again belching forth shot 
and shell: 

" Can you take that battery? " said he; " it must be 
taken!" 

Taylor wheeled his horse and galloped to the centre 
of his line. 

"Louisianians!" he shouted, "can you take that 
battery? " 

A cheer was the response, and putting himself at 
the head of his column Taylor led the way. The 
ground was rugged and much obstructed by logs and 
stumps. All semblance of alignment was lost. 
Every man knew the point to be reached, and each 
Strove to get there, giving little thought to his neigh- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 365 

bor. The Federals loaded and fired with wonderful 
speed and with frightful accuracy. Men were mowed 
down like grass. " They advanced," said an eye- 
witness, " in the midst of one incessant storm of grape, 
canister, and shell, literally covering the valley." At 
last the crest of the hill is reached. One more deadly 
discharge bursts from the smoking muzzles of the 
Federal guns, then the gunners, seeing the enemy's 
advance still unchecked, turned despairingly to flee. 
With loud cheers the Confederates rushed upon them. 
Their bayonets made havoc among the escaping Fed- 
erals. The captured guns were turned on their for- 
mer owners. The Federal retreat fast became a rout. 

" Jackson came up with intense light in his eyes," 
writes General Taylor, " grasped my hand, and said 
the brigade should have the captured battery. I 
thought the men would go mad with cheering especially 
the Irishmen. A huge fellow, with one eye closed 
and half his whiskers burned with powder, was riding 
cock-horse on a gun, and catching my attention yelled 
out, ' We told you to bet on your boys.' " 

So fierce and bitter was the fighting about this bat- 
tery that gradually both commanders withdrew all 
their men from the other parts of the field and con- 
centrated them there. But, though the utmost gal- 
lantry was shown on both sides, the superior numbers 
of the Confederates soon decided the contest. They 
outnumbered the Federals three to one, and so soon 
as all were brought into effective use the Federal re- 
sistance was crushed, and Shields had naught left him 
but retreat. This he did in fairly good order. Just 
as the fate of the battle was decided, Fremont came 
up from Cross Keys in hot haste, with reenforcements 
that might have turned the scale had he been able to 
take his troops into action. But Jackson's rear-guard 
had burned the bridges across the Shenandoah, and 



366 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Fremont suffered the experience of seeing Shields's 
army cut to pieces before his very eyes, while he was 
unable to lend his brother officer the slightest aid. 

The battle of Port Republic was one of the most 
hotly contested of the war. In it the Federals lost 
1,002 men, and the Confederates 657. Great gal- 
lantry was shown by the soldiers of both armies, and 
the victory of the Confederates was due largely, if not 
wholly, to the comparative weakness of the force op- 
posed to them. 

With this battle ends the narrative of Jackson's 
valley campaign. Upon it rests largely his fame as a 
soldier and a general. His rapid marches, his quick 
decisions, his prompt acceptance of dangerous chances, 
his quick comprehension of what his enemy's tactics 
were likely to be, are apparent throughout. And, if 
not methods but results are to be considered in judg- 
ing the value of his work, let it be remembered that 
he was sent to the valley solely in order to keep 
McDowell from moving on Richmond. Had he ac- 
complished this task, and lost his own army, his suc- 
cess would have been applauded. As it was, he ac- 
complished the task, saved his own army by the two 
victories at Cross Keys and Port Republic, and took 
that army to Richmond to aid in beating off the foe 
that was already at the gates of the Confederate 
capital. 

During the last weeks of Jackson's manoeuvring in 
the Shenandoah Valley McClellan was resting quietly 
in his camps along the Chickahominy waiting for 
McDowell, who never came. General Robert E. Lee 
had succeeded to the command of the Confederate 
armies. General Johnston having been severely 
wounded on the second day at Seven Pines. Lee was 
one of America's truly great citizens. A Virginian 
by birth, his family was closely connected with George 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 367 

Washington, in whose army his father had served during 
the Revolution. He was himself a graduate of West 
Point, a veteran of the Mexican war and a protege 
of General Winfield Scott, No secessionist himself, 
he reluctantly elected to follow his state when she 
went out of the Union, becoming not merely her 
ablest general, but one of the great military geniuses 
of history. His was, moreover, one of the noblest 
and most elevated characters the world had ever 
known. 

Lee at once determined to attack the Federals, and 
first to send for Jackson. But he wanted this move- 
ment to remain a secret until the attack was actually 
delivered. Accordingly he began elaborate plans by 
which to deceive the enemy. Two brigades were 
taken from the trenches before Richmond and loaded 
on trains bound ostensibly for the Shenandoah Valley. 
But the trains were mysteriously blocked all day hard 
by Belle Isle where some thousands of Federal prison- 
ers were held. The Richmond papers roared fiercely 
about the " blunder." They declared that the news 
of the reenforcement of Jackson would certainly reach 
Washington. They were quite right. That was part 
of Lee's plan. When there was ample time for the 
news to get out the troops were disembarked a few 
miles out in the country and kept in readiness to re- 
turn to the trenches. 

Jackson for his part was engaging in a like game 
with the Federals. 

After the battle of Port Republic the Federals left 
a large number of wounded at Harrisonburg. Several 
Federal surgeons, with a train of twenty-five or thirty 
ambulances, were sent back after the wounded; but 
Colonel Munford, the officer in command of the Con- 
federates, who had taken possession of the place, re- 
fused to deliver them up until he could hear from 



368 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Jackson. He promised, however, to send a courier 
to Jackson at once, and in the meantime gave the sur- 
geons accommodations in a room adjoining his head- 
quarters, and separated therefrom by only a thin par- 
tition. After a delay of some hours the surgeons 
heard the courier coming upstairs with clanking sabre 
and heavy tread. They eagerly put their ears to the 
partition. 

•' Well," said Colonel Munford, " what did General 
Jackson say? " 

" He told me to tell you," answered the courier, 
in stentorian tones, " that the wounded Yankees are 
not to be taken away. He is coming right on him- 
self with heavy reenforcements. Whiting's division 
is up. Hood's is coming. The whole road from here 
to Staunton is perfectly lined with troops, and so 
crowded that I could hardly ride along." 

With this important news the Federal surgeons re- 
turned to their camp, chuckling over the thought of 
how they had discovered the enemy's intentions. And 
that night Fremont fell back and began to intrench 
in preparation for the attack; while Jackson, for his 
part, was leading his famous foot cavalry eastward, 
and had turned his back on Fremont and the Shenan- 
doah Valley. 

Galloping far ahead of his army Jackson reached 
General Lee's headquarters on the 23d of June. A 
hurried council of war was called and it was deter- 
mined to attack McClellan's right wing on the 26th 
at Mechanicsville, close to Richmond. Jackson was 
to open the battle, the divisions of A. P. Hill, Long- 
street, and D. H. Hill to go into action as soon as 
they found he was engaged. But when the day and 
hour came Jackson was missing, one of the few occa- 
sions when he had failed to move and act in complete 
accordance with orders. A road heavily blocked by 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 369 

felled trees delayed him, and he reached the battle- 
field too late to join in the action. A. P. Hill, after 
waiting until three o'clock for the expected signal, 
could restrain his men no longer and determined to 
attack. It would have been better had he waited 
longer and reconnoitred more precisely. His antago- 
nists occupied an almost impregnable position. In 
their front flowed Beaver Dam Creek, a sluggish 
stream about waist-deep, and bordered by swamps and 
bits of high ground alternately. On the east side of 
this creek the Federals had a long line of earthworks 
and rifle-pits. Not one bridge had been left spanning 
the creek, and along its eastern bank trees had been 
felled, making the diflicult approach to it still more 
difl^cult. More than eight thousand men and five 
strong batteries defended the Union line. A wise 
commander would have recognized the folly of allow- 
ing men to throw their lives away in charging such 
a position. But A. P. Hill hurled his regiments into 
the teeth of the Union fire, only to see them decimated 
by that hail of shot and shell. 

The story of the battle of Mechanicsville Is soon 
told. " The enemy had intrenchments of great 
strength and development on the other side of the 
creek," writes General D. H. Hill, " and had lined 
the banks with his magnificent artillery. The ap- 
proach was over an open plain, exposed to a murder- 
ous fire of all arms, and across an almost impassable 
stream. The result was, as might have been foreseen, 
a bloody and disastrous repulse. Nearly every field- 
ofiicer in the brigade was killed or wounded. It was 
unfortunate for the Confederates that the crossing 
was begun before Jackson got in the rear of Mechan- 
icsville. The loss of that position would have neces- 
sitated the abandonment of the line of Beaver Dam 
Creek, as in fact it did the next day. We were lavish 



370 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of blood in those days, and it was thought to be a 
great thing to charge a battery of artillery or an 
earthwork lined with infantry." 

Jackson failing to attack the Federals on the flank 
the day was lost to the Confederates, who lost in the 
action nearly i,6oo men and won no substantial ad- 
vantage. The battle of Mechanicsville will long 
be remembered by the wearers of the gray as one of 
their most desperate and most discouraging battles. 
With it began that series of sharp and strenuous con- 
flicts, with victory now perching on one side and then 
upon the other, that determined the fate of McClel- 
lan's Peninsular campaign, and that is known as the 
Seven Days' Battles. Mechanicsville was fought on 
the 26th of June, the battle of Malvern Hill on July 
I. In so short a time as this were all the gigantic 
preparations of the Federals for the capture of Rich- 
mond wrecked. 

When darkness put an end to the fighting at Beaver 
Dam Creek the Confederates withdrew beyond the 
range of the Union guns, and made preparations to 
renew the attack in the morning. About the Federal 
headquarters all was life and bustle. Scouts were 
coming in, bringing news of Jackson's arrival. 
Deserters arrived, telling of the great preparations the 
Confederates were making for an attack in force the 
next day. By one o'clock that night McClellan was 
so convinced of the seriousness of his position that he 
ordered the line at Beaver Dam Creek abandoned, 
and a new line formed six miles to the rear. Before 
sunrise the change was effected, while a battery or 
two and a handful of skirmishers left in the earth- 
works kept up a scattering fire to make the Confed- 
erates believe that the whole Federal army still con- 
fronted them. 

The new line chpsen by the Federals was hardly so 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 371 

strong as the position on Beaver Dam Creek, but was, 
nevertheless, a strong position. A shallow, muddy 
rivulet, Powhite Creek, flowed at the base of a semi- 
circular range of hills, upon the crest of which the 
Federals had thrown up earthworks and built barriers 
of logs. The artillery in the breastworks could do 
good service, for the ground in front was clear of trees, 
and no underbrush was there to protect an advancing 
foe from the deadly aim of the cannoneers. 

Not far from the Union lines stood a large grist- 
mill, one of the largest and finest in Virginia, and 
known far and wide as " Gaines's Mill." Still nearer 
the Union lines was a little settlement called Cool 
Arbor, known somewhat to Virginians as a summer 
resort. From each of these places the battle had 
derived a name, being called in the Union reports the 
battle of Gaines's Mill, while the Confederates called 
it the battle of Cool Arbor. 

In command of the Federal forces at Gaines's Mill 
was General Fitz-John Porter. He had before him 
the task of checking the Confederate advance along 
the north bank of the Chickahominy until General 
McClellan should have accomplished the diflScult and 
dangerous feat of transferring his base of supplies 
from White House, on the Pamunkey River, to a point 
on the James River. How difficult an undertaking this 
was, may be judged from the fact that over five thou- 
sand wagons, loaded with stores of all kinds, and live 
cattle to the number of 2,500, had to be taken across 
the muddy, swampy peninsula. It was, of course, of 
the first importance that a strong and determined 
force should stand between this long train of muni- 
tions of war and the enemy, and it was at Gaines's Mill 
that this check was interposed. 

Porter's line at Gaines's Mill was in the form of a 
semicircle, Morrill's division being on the right, and 



372 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Sykes's division upon the left. In front of the line 
was a narrow gully, or ravine, well filled with sharp- 
shooters lurking behind trees and rocks. Of the 
troops that made up Porter's command a great num- 
ber were regulars, and in the battle which ensued the 
superiority of these well-drilled soldiers over the ordi- 
nary volunteer was made apparent. 

General A. P. Hill opened the battle, leading his 
soldiers with great gallantry against the left of the 
Federal line. The battle was fought in the woods, the 
troops manoeuvring with difficulty among the count- 
less tree trunks, and the artillery doing as much 
damage by the splinters struck from the trees by the 
flying missiles as by the cannon-balls themselves. 
Once, three Confederate regiments reached the crest of 
the hill, and for a moment the victory hung wavering 
in the balance; but the dogged obstinacy and pluck of 
the Federal regulars, and the rapidity and accuracy 
with which they served their guns, checked the ad- 
vance of the assailants, and with a quick charge the 
Federals regained the ground which they had so nearly 
lost. 

General Longstreet now took up the attack, and 
when Hill, after an hour or more of inaction, returned 
to the assault, the battle raged fiercely all along the 
line. At all points the tide of battle seemed setting 
against the Confederates. Despite their repeated 
charges they had wholly failed to pierce the Union 
line. Their regiments were getting decimated. The 
afternoon passed rapidly away. Evening was draw- 
ing near, and it looked as though the sun would set 
on a day which should rival the day of the battle at 
Mechanicsville as a complete and disastrous defeat for 
the Confederate cause. 

General Lee had come in person to the field. As 
he rode through the woods he saw how grave was the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 373 

situation and how great the danger of defeat. One 
thing alone can save the day for the Confederates, 
and that is the arrival of Jackson, with his troops, 
upon the field before sundown. Suddenly, over on 
the far left of the Confederate line, arises the noise 
of artillery; then comes the rattle of small arms. The 
noise increases until it becomes evident that a fierce 
battle is raging in that quarter. The men of Hill's 
and Longstreet's divisions cheer lustily, and turn with 
renewed vigor to their work, for they know that Jack- 
son has arrived. General Lee puts spurs to his horse 
and gallops off in the direction of the cannonading. 
He meets Jackson at the edge of a wood. 

" Ah, General," said Lee, " I am very glad to see 
you. I hoped to have been with you before." 

Jackson acknowledged the salutation with his usual 
impassive bow. He was mounted on his lean, old 
sorrel steed. His uniform was dingy and stained with 
dust. His old fatigue-cap was pulled down over his 
eyes. In his hand he held a lemon, at which he was 
sucking, with his whole mind evidently concentrated 
upon the military problem with which he had to 
deal. 

Lee was trimly, even elegantly, dressed, and acutely 
alert to all the sounds and signs of battle. The sound 
of the firing along Jackson's lines seemed to disquiet 
him, and he said to Jackson: 

" That fire is very heavy. Do you think your men 
can stand it? " 

" They can stand almost anything," was Jackson's 
response; then, after listening a moment to the noise 
of battle, he added, " Yes, they can stand that." 

Up to the hour of Jackson's arrival the battle had 
been going against the Confederates. Many of A. 
P. Hill's soldiers were raw recruits brought up from 
Georgia and the Gulf States. Before the fire of the 



374 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Union regulars these men fell into a panic. After 
Hill had been engaged for two hours with the centre 
of the Union line he found his troops melting away. 
'* Men were leaving the field in every direction and 
in great disorder," said the Confederate General 
Whiting, in his report. " Two regiments, one from 
South Carolina and one from Louisiana, were actually 
marching back from the fire. Men were skulking 
from the front in a shameful manner." It was at this 
juncture that Jackson arrived, and by his arrival 
changed the tide of battle. 

The veterans from the Shenandoah Valley swung 
into the Confederate line of battle, between the divi- 
sions of A. P. Hill and D. H. Hill. It was the most 
hazardous spot upon the whole line. Before them 
stretched a level, open plain, full quarter of a mile 
wide, and swept by the fire of the enemy's artillery 
and sharpshooters. At the edge of this plain rose 
the sharp declivity called Turkey Hill, sixty feet high 
and steep of ascent. On the crest of the hill were 
the Federal batteries. On the slope of the hill, be- 
neath the muzzles of the cannon were lines of infantry 
sheltered behind temporary breastworks of logs, fence 
rails, and knapsacks. 

Against this wall of determined men Jackson hurled 
his regiments. More than once they advanced across 
the plain, almost to the foot of Turkey Hill, only to be 
swept away by the merciless storm of lead and iron from 
the serrated lines on the hill. Once under the shelter 
of the woods they would form again, march out once 
more with cheers and high hopes, only to be again 
swept back in confusion. 

It was dusk when the last desperate charge that 
pierced the Union line was made. General Whiting's 
division, which held the right of Jackson's line, and 
was made up largely of Texans, won the honors of 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 375 

the day. Let one of the Texans who joined in that 
mad rush across the shot-swept plain and up the front 
of Turkey Hill tell the story: 

After remaining in the rear, lying down for perhaps half an 
hour, General Hood came for us, and, moving by the right flank 
about half a mile, halted us in an open space to the right of some 
timber, and in rear of an apple orchard. The sight which we here 
beheld beggars description. The ground was strewn with the dead 
and dying, while our ranks were broken every instant by flying and 
panic-stricken soldiers. In front of us was the " Old 3d Brigade," 
who, but a few moments before, had started with cheers to storm 
the fatal palisade. But the storm of lead and iron was too severe; 
they wavered for a moment and fell upon the ground. At this 
instant General Hood, who had in person taken command of our 
regiment, commanded in his clear, ringing voice : " Forward, quick, 
march ! " and onward moved the little band of five hundred with 
the coolness of veterans. Here Colonel Marshall fell dead from 
his horse, pierced by a minie-ball. Volleys of musketry and 
showers of grape, canister, and shell ploughed through us, but were 
only answered by the stern " Close up — close up to the colors 1 " 
and onward we rushed over the dead and dying, without a pause, 
until within about one hundred yards of the breastworks. We had 
reached the apex of the hill, and some of the men, seeing the 
enemy just before them, commenced discharging their pieces. It 
was at this point that the preceding brigades had halted, and 
beyond which none had gone in consequence of the terrible con- 
centrated fire of the concealed enemy. At this critical juncture 
the voice of General Hood was heard above the din of battle : 
" Forward, forward ! charge right down upon them, and drive them 
out with the bayonet ! " Fixing bayonets as they moved, they 
made one grand rush for the fort ; down the hill ; across the creek 
and fallen timber, and the next minute saw our battle-flag planted 
upon the captured breastwork. The enemy, frightened at the 
rapid approach of pointed steel, rose from behind their defences 
and started up the hill at full speed. One volley was poured into 
their backs, and it seemed as if every ball found a victim, so great 
was the slaughter. Their works were ours, and as our flag moved 
from the first to the second tier of defences a shout arose from 
the shattered remnant of that regiment, which will long be remem- 
bered by those that heard it. — a shout which announced that the 
wall of death was broken, and victory which for hours had 
hovered doubtfully over that bloody field, had at length perched 
upon the battle-flag of the Fourth Texas. Right and left it was 
taken up and ran along the lines for miles; long after many of 
those who had started it were in eternity. 



376 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Few battles of the war were more hotly contested 
than this fight at Gaines's Mill. The Federals lost in 
killed, 894; wounded, 3,107; missing, 2,836, — total, 
6,837. The loss of the Confederates has never been 
exactly determined, but was about equal to that of the 
Federals, 

McClellan's army as a whole was now in full retreat 
toward his new base at Harrison's Landing. His 
troops were constantly harassed by General Magruder, 
although, as the retiring Federals burned all the 
bridges across the Chickahominy and tore up the roads 
through the swamps, the main body of Lee's army 
could not come up to them. Magruder had but 
twenty-five thousand men but with these he forced the 
Federals to fight at Allen's farm. Savage's Station, and 
other points, always being beaten back but still adding 
to the difficulties of McClellan's retreat. Though 
there was no rout, nor anything approaching one, the 
withdrawal of the Union forces was accompanied by a 
tremendous sacrifice of stores and munitions of war. 
One who followed the retreating army wrote : 

The whole country was full of deserted plunder. Army wagons 
and pontoon trains partially burned or crippled; mounds of grain 
and rice and hillocks of dressed beef smouldering; tens of thou- 
sands of axes, picks, and shovels ; camp-kettles gashed with 
hatchets; medicine-chests with their drugs stirred into a foul 
medley, and all the apparatus of a vast and lavish host ; while the 
mire under foot was mixed with blankets lately new, and with 
overcoats torn from the waist up. For weeks afterward agents 
of our army were busy in gathering in the spoils. Great stores 
of fixed ammunition were saved, while more were destroyed. 

The final stand of the Federal army was at Mal- 
vern Hill on the northern bank of the James River. 
The position selected was exceedingly strong. Both 
flanks were protected by rivers and the front was on 
a commanding plateau swept by artillery, while be- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 377 

yond this open plain the ground was swampy, densely 
overgrown, and almost impassable. Lee expected to 
shatter the enemy's line with artillery and follow with 
charges of heavy masses of troops. But the artillery 
proved ineffective — so much so that at three o'clock 
Lee thought of abandoning the assault, but later, mis- 
led by some movements of the Union line, sent in one 
division after another to defeat and death. The 
troops were willing enough to undertake the most 
perilous feats, and their leaders, from Lee down, were 
merciless in sending them into the deadly field of car- 
nage. The colonel of a regiment in Jackson's division 
who had been ordered to storm a Federal battery 
ventured to protest. 

" Did you order me to advance on that field, sir? " 
he asked of his commander. 

'* Yes," answered Jackson curtly, his steel-blue eyes 
flashing with a suggestion of impending wrath. 

"Impossible, sir!" exclaimed the oflEcer. "My 
men will be annihilated! Nothing in the world can 
live there. They will be annihilated!" 

" Sir," answered Jackson steadily, looking the officer 
full in the face, " I always endeavor to take care of 
my wounded and bury my dead. You have heard my 
order, — obey it." 

The charge was made, but it was as fruitless as those 
that had gone before. Despite repeated charges the 
day was lost to the Confederates. They had lost over 
five thousand men, the Federals not one-third as many. 

At nightfall McClellan issued orders for his troops 
to fall back to Harrison's Landing. There was 
bitter criticism of the order then and later. Many 
thought the Confederates so demoralized that McClel- 
lan might have re-formed his ranks the next day and 
fought his way right into Richmond. His foremost 
officers were astonished. Fitz-John Porter protested 



378 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

warmly. The impetuous Kearny burst out with the 
indignant assertion: "I, Philip Kearny, an old sol- 
dier, enter my solemn protest against this order for a 
retreat. We ought, instead of retreating, to follow 
up the army and take Richmond; and in full view of 
all the responsibilities of such a declaration I can say to 
you all, such an order can only be prompted by coward- 
ice or treason." 

Nevertheless the army retired as ordered and re- 
mained quiescent at Harrison's Landing until Halleck, 
succeeding to supreme command, ordered it back to 
Washington and the Peninsular campaign ended with 
a record of nothing accomplished. During the " Seven 
Days' Battles " McClellan had at the outset 105,000 
men, and Lee's force varied between 80,000 and 
90,000 effectives. The Federals lost in all 1,734 
killed, 8,062 wounded, and 6,053 missing or captured; 
a total of 15,849. The Confederate losses were 3,286 
killed, 15,909 wounded, and 940 missing or captured, 
a total of 20,135. But despite their great preponder- 
ance of killed and wounded the Confederates had saved 
their capital. 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Campaign of Shiloh — The Army and Navy Invest New Madrid 
and Island No. lo — Grant's Army Advances to Pittsburg Land- 
ing — Battle of Shiloh — Far Reaching Consequences of the Con- 
federate Reverse. 

Meantime there had been hard fighting in the West 
with the broad general result that the advance into 
the Confederacy which Grant had begun with the cap- 
ture of Forts Henry and Donelson had been stubbornly 
maintained. The Confederate armies had in the main 
been pushed back out of Tennessee. On the west bank 
of the Mississippi, New Madrid was the objec- 
tive of a powerful military and naval expedition under 
General Pope and Commodore Foote, and together 
with the fortifications on Island No. lo, a sand bar in 
the middle of the river, long since washed away, gave 
the Federal forces serious occupation for many weeks. 
In the main the operations against these works were 
approaches by parallels and a vigorous bombard- 
ment. April 5th General Beauregard telegraphed to 
Richmond concerning the attack on New Madrid: 
" The enemy has thrown three thousand shells and 
burned fifty tons of gunpowder without injuring the 
effectiveness of our works, and killing but one 
man." 

The gunboats naturally took an active part in this 
cannonade, and the soldiers in the cold and muddy 
trenches by which New Madrid was hemmed in used 
to get impatient over the ineffective firing. 

"Well, what is the navy doing to-day?" was the 
question passed along the lines when the dull booming 

57? 



380 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of the cannon told that the conflict had been renewed. 
" Oh, it's still bombarding the State of Tennessee at- 
long range," was the impatient reply. 

There was fighting, too, in Missouri during this 
period. Van Dorn, a dashing Confederate cavalry 
leader with about fourteen thousand men, among whom 
were a few bands of half-civilized Indians, marched 
into that state from Arkansas, encountered General 
Curtis at Elkhorn Tavern and Pea Ridge and was 
soundly beaten. There was never again any consider- 
able Confederate army on Missouri soil. 

But the really vital military movement in the West 
during March and April, 1862, was what is known as 
the Shiloh campaign. Shiloh was a little log church, 
dedicated to the Prince of Peace, in southwestern 
Tennessee, near the boundary lines of Alabama and 
Mississippi. It was known to perhaps a hundred farm- 
ers in the vicinity, but when the demons of war made 
it their battle ground its name was carried on the 
thunders of cannon over all the civilized world. How 
then came a great battle to be fought there? The 
immediate spot was unimportant; that the battle was 
there was the mere result of accident. But that a 
great battle should be fought somewhere in the neigh- 
borhood was made certain by the disposition of the 
hostile armies in March, 1862. In and about Corinth, 
Mississippi, General Albert Sidney Johnston had about 
fifty thousand men. But his wings were widely separated 
and both Halleck and Buell conceived the plan of 
thrusting a Union army between them and defeating 
them one at a time. This plan failed for various 
reasons, chiefly delay in giving it effect. Halleck be- 
came enraged at Grant, some say through jealousy, 
and for a time the latter was under arrest, thus further 
impeding the progress of the campaign. Freed from 
arrest and ultimately put in command of the whole 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 381 

expedition, he hurried to Pittsburg Landing, a spot on 
the Tennessee River above Fort Henry. Here he had 
about thirty-five thousand men. His own head- 
quarters were at Savannah. The camp of so great an 
army extends over several miles, and the tents of Sher- 
man's division were in the clearings about Shiloh 
Church. One flaw in Grant's first dispositions came 
near costing him his army. Though the enemy was 
known to be near by, he neglected to intrench. Thus 
far his experience had been with rather a sluggish foe, 
and he took a chance of which later in his career he 
would never have dreamed. 

By the end of March the Confederates had about 
forty thousand men at Corinth, twenty miles from 
the Union camps. Grant's army was still divided. 
Buell with seventeen thousand men was moving from 
Nashville to join him but had not yet arrived. 

Late on the night of the 2d of April there came 
to General Johnston a telegram from General Cheat- 
ham, far away on the Confederate left flank, saying 
that a Federal division under General Lew Wallace 
had been manoeuvring in his vicinity all day. The 
telegram had been given to Beauregard, who for- 
warded it with the endorsement, " Now is the time to 
advance on Pittsburg Landing." With the telegram 
in his hand, Johnston sought Bragg's quarters. That 
officer was found in bed, but listened to the news, saw 
at once that if Lew Wallace was in the place reported 
the Union army was dismembered, and added his recom- 
mendation to that of Beauregard. Johnston had been 
in doubt, but his hesitation now vanished. At day- 
break the army moved but lack of knowledge of the 
roads, faulty tactics, blunders somewhere, combined 
with heavy rain to so delay the columns that the attack 
could not be delivered at the time set. So perfectly, 
however, had the Confederates masked their advance 



382 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

that they went into bivouac within two miles of a Union 
camp absolutely unaware of their presence. 

That night the Confederate generals assembled in 
council of war about the campfire. Beauregard urged 
the abandonment of the attack. He declared that the 
Federals could not fail to have been put on their guard 
by the long delay. Johnston was determined to carry 
out the original plan. He felt sure that the enemy 
was still ignorant of their presence. A young Union 
officer had been captured during the day, and had ex- 
claimed, as he saw the roads crowded with soldiers 
and batteries, " Why, this means a battle ! They don't 
expect anything like this back yonder." This evidence 
that the Federals were still ignorant of his approach, 
coupled with his disinclination to abandon a military 
movement already begun, led him to end the conference 
by saying quietly: 

" Gentlemen, we shall attack at daylight to-morrow 
morning. I would fight them if they were a million." 
The officers parted, but not to sleep. Shortly before 
dawn they assembled again about the campfire before 
the tent of the commander-in-chief. Again they dis- 
cussed the situation. Suddenly a sputter of musketry 
along the front indicated that the skirmishers had 
aroused the enemy. 

*' The battle has opened, gentlemen," said Johnston; 
" it is too late now to change our dispositions." 

Then, as he swung himself to his saddle, he said, 
" To-night we will water our horses in the Tennessee 
River." 

" And sleep in the tents of the enemy," added 
Beauregard, who felt all the enthusiasm of the soldier 
tingling in his veins, as the sound of the battle, against 
which he had advised, met his ears. It was then 
fourteen minutes past five. 

For an hour the fire of the skirmishers continued, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 383 

Strange to say, the Union troops did not take the alarm. 
The idea that they were on the verge of a serious con- 
flict seems not to have occurred to them. The Union 
troops who had encountered the Confederate advance 
were three companies of Missourians under Colonel 
Moore, who had been sent forward to reconnoitre. 
Instead of firing and falling back to give the alarm, 
they held their ground stubbornly, while the Confeder- 
ates were massing their regiments to swoop down upon 
the camp of General Prentiss, in which the men were 
quietly breakfasting. Their line of battle once formed, 
the Confederates did not dally long with the handful 
of Missourians. A rush, and the way was clear before 
them. The sound of the fierce " rebel yell " and the 
din of cannon and musketry then told the men in Pren- 
tiss's camp that they were in for a fight. But before 
they could get in line, before they could even grasp 
their weapons, Hardee's troops swarmed down upon 
them, fighting with such as were armed, and ordering 
the unarmed to surrender. So complete was the sur- 
prise, that many of the Federals were captured in their 
tents; some outside their tents, but in the raiment of 
night-time; others seated about the benches on which 
breakfast was being served. The few who escaped 
capture fled in confusion. The victors should have 
pressed on in hot pursuit, but instead wasted time 
in plundering the captured tents, in cheering and rejoic- 
ing over a victory which they thought already com- 
plete. 

Indeed the battle was but beginning. Sherman's 
division, badly battered, became practically fused with 
that of McClernand and through the long morning 
fell back slowly before the Confederate advance. 
Next to them to the left were Prentiss and W. H. L. 
Wallace. Part of the position held by them was called 
by the Confederates " the Hornet's Nest." To carry 



384 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

it was a bloody task, A Confederate officer tells of 
the fighting there thus: 

I witnessed the various bloody and unsuccessful attacks upon the 
" Hornets' Nest." During one of the dreadful repulses of our 
forces, General Bragg directed me to ride forward to the central 
regiment of a brigade of troops that was recoiling across an open 
field, to take its colors and carry them forward. " Our flag must 
not go back again," he said. Obeying the order, I dashed through 
the line of battle, seized the colors from the color-bearer, and said 
to him, " General Bragg says these colors must not go to the 
rear." While I was talking to him, the color-sergeant was shot 
down. A moment or two afterwards I was almost alone on horse- 
back in the open field between the two lines of battle. An officer 
came up to me with a bullet-hole in each cheek, the blood stream- 
ing from his mouth, and asked, " What are you doing with my 
colors, sir?" — "I am obeying General Bragg's orders to hold them 
where they are," was my reply. " Let me have them," he said ; 
" if any man but my color-bearer carries these colors, I am the 
man. Tell General Bragg I will see that these colors are in the 
right place. But he must attack this position in flank; we can 
never carry it alone from the front." 

To the left still of this position was another hill and 
here was posted General Hurlburt's brigade. Here 
occurred the great disaster to the Confederate cause, 
a disaster which cost them in the end the field of Shiloh, 
and which many think was a dominating factor in the 
loss of the war. Hurlburt's position had been changed 
several times without success. Finally General Al- 
bert Sidney Johnston had gone himself to the scene. 

" They are offering stubborn resistance here," he 
said to one of his staff; '* I shall have to put the bay- 
onet to them." 

Then, bareheaded, he rode slowly along the scarred 
and bleeding line. 

** Men, they are stubborn ! We must use the bay- 
onet! " he said; and as he reached the centre of the 
line of soldiers standing eagerly waiting his words, he 
cried, " I will lead you ! " and wheeling his horse to 
the front, moved toward the foe. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 385 

Men's hearts leaped in their breasts. It was an 
act so simple, and yet so soldierly, that it would have 
made the veriest coward a hero. The general who, 
at that time, even more than Robert E. Lee, was be- 
loved by the people of the South, had discarded the 
privileges of his rank, and offered his life like a simple 
lieutenant to lead a forlorn hope. With a mighty 
cheer the men of Stratham's and Bowen's brigades 
followed in his footsteps. 

Up the hill pressed the soldiers of the South, never 
flinching. Their leader rode ahead through the storm 
of flying missiles, stern and unwavering in his course. 
The crest is gained, and, with a ringing shout, the 
sorely shattered line sweeps over it. It is a victory; 
but in the moment of triumph their rejoicing is turned 
to sorrow. The Federals have retreated slowly, firing 
as they go, A minie-ball strikes General Johnston in 
the leg. With iron will he sits his horse, giving or- 
ders to those about him. One of his oflicers notices 
his unearthly pallor. ''General, are you wounded?" 
he asks. 

" Yes, and I fear very seriously," is the response, 
spoken slowly and with difficulty. 

They lead him to a mossy bank near by, and exam- 
ine his wound. An artery has been cut, and the blood 
comes in spurts. Had a surgeon been near at hand 
the wound might have been healed; but the general had 
sent away his private surgeon to attend some wounded 
prisoners; and so his friends and colleagues stood help- 
lessly at his side until the brave spirit of the soldier 
took its departure. 

The general's death was concealed from the rank 
and file of the Confederate army and the troops fought 
on gallantly. The " Hornet's Nest " was attacked 
and carried. General Prentiss with three thousand of 
his men was captured. General W. H. L. Wallace 



386 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

was mortally wounded. The Union lines were broken 
everywhere, and the shattered fragments of the army 
were being forced back into an angle formed by the 
Tennessee River and Snake Creek. The Confederates 
had only to press on to destroy it all. Then Beaure- 
gard, who had succeeded Johnston in command, blun- 
dered. He sent out to all his commanders the order 
to discontinue the attack. 

An aide, bearing the order, comes to Bragg, who is 
enthusiastically leading the advance of the Confederate 
right down the Tennessee River towards Pittsburg 
Landing. Bragg sees victory in his very grasp. To 
his men he says, " One more charge, my men, and we 
shall capture them all." 

At this moment the aide appears and says, " General 
Beauregard directs that the pursuit be stopped; the 
victory is sufficiently complete; it is needless to expose 
our men to the fire of the gunboats." 

" My God ! Was a victory ever sufficiently com- 
plete?" cries Bragg; then asks the aide if the order 
had been given to any other commander. 

" Yes, sir, to General Polk on your left. He is 
already obeying it." 

*' Then it is too late," said Bragg sadly. " Had the 
order come to me first, I should not have obeyed it. 
Now the battle is lost." 

But though someone had blundered, the order was 
obeyed. The sound of the firing gradually died away. 
The Confederates lay down to rest literally in the 
camps of the Federals, and had it not been for the 
early discontinuance of the battle they would, in all 
probability, have fulfilled that other prediction of the 
night before, and watered their horses in the Tennessee 
River; for when the fatal order came to Bragg, there 
was but one Federal position remaining to be taken, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 387 

and that was not of sufficient strength to long detain 
an army flushed with victory. 

Never was a defeated army more miraculously 
spared; never a victory more fatuously thrown away. 
Night fell on a Union army thoroughly beaten, but 
during that night three divisions of Buell's fresh 
troops came up to Grant's aid. Lew Wallace with 
seven thousand men arrived early the next morning. 
When dawn came it was the Federals who opened the 
battle, not the victors of the day before. The fighting 
was hardly begun before it was evident that the wearers 
of the blue would retrieve all they had lost. The 
Confederates, bleeding with the wounds of the day be- 
fore, depressed by the loss of a popular general, were 
further disheartened by being confronted by fresh 
troops in overwhelming numbers. Early in the day 
they began to fall back, and though never routed, were 
driven slowly from all the ground they had gained. 
By noon Beauregard yielded to the inevitable and or- 
dered a retreat to Corinth which was made in good 
order. 

The two days of fighting had cost both armies dear. 
To many a home. North and South, did the news of 
Shiloh's bloody field bring sorrow. Full 1,700 of 
Grant's soldiers laid down their lives. Of the wounded 
there were 7,882, and of prisoners tal^en away by the 
Confederates in their retreat, 3,956. Beauregard's 
loss cannot be stated with complete accuracy. The 
best authorities place it at 10,699, of whom 1,728 were 
killed. On the first day the Confederates captured 
thirty-three cannon; on the second day the Federals 
captured thirty. In this respect, therefore, the honors 
were about equally divided. 

Concerning this battle volumes have been written. 
Partisans of each side have claimed it as a victory for 
their party, while others have declared it indecisive. 



388 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

The self-esteem of many of the distinguished officers 
engaged has been nearly touched, and many of them 
have added their opinions, explanations, or theories 
to the controversy. But it would seem that a dispas- 
sionate study of the battle would esablish the fact that 
on the first day the victory was won by the Confeder- 
ates, only to be wrested from them by the Federals on 
Monday. But as the Federal victory was final, the 
Federals enjoyed all the fruits of triumph. They re- 
mained on the ground, while the Confederates had 
to make a weary retreat of nearly eighteen miles. 

But that the battle of Shiloh was indecisive cannot 
for a moment be admitted. It opened the back door 
of the Confederacy for invasion. It made the cleft 
wherein was to be inserted the wedge that should split 
the Confederacy in twain. Within a few weeks the 
Union forces, under the command of Halleck, had 
followed up the advantage won on the field of Shiloh. 
By regular approaches they had driven the foe from 
Corinth and seized his works there. With the fall 
of that stronghold disappeared the last vestige of that 
Confederate line of defence which had stretched from 
the Alleghanies to the Mississippi River. 

The Mississippi River, too, was being opened, for on 
April 7th, the very day of the disaster to the Con- 
federate cause at Shiloh, Island No, 10 with seven 
thousand men surrendered to the combined naval and 
military forces under Commodore Foote and General 
Pope. The western line of the Confederacy was being 
shot to pieces despite Lee's indomitable stand in the 
East. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Halleck Appointed General-in-Chief — Army of the Potomac Recalled 
From the Peninsula — The Army of Virginia Moves on Rich- 
mond — General Pope in Command — Lee Strikes Hard — Pope 
Beaten at Second Bull Run — Richmond Campaign Abandoned. 

In July, 1863, President Lincoln determined to fill the 
position of general-in-chief of the armies which had 
been vacant since McClellan left Washington to take 
command of the Army of the Potomac. In seeking 
such an officer the President naturally looked westward, 
for up to that time virtually all the Union successes 
had been won there. His choice fell upon General 
Halleck, who had been in command of the Depart- 
ment of the Mississippi in which the victories of Forts 
Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and Island No. 10, were 
won. Halleck had nothing to do with these victories. 
Indeed, Grant in his " Memoirs " notes that his opera- 
tions on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers were 
steadily impeded by Halleck's opposition. However, 
to the President and the public, Halleck was the vic- 
torious general, and he was summoned to Washington 
to command all the armies of the Union. 

Prior to his arrival, the President himself had seen 
that the Union forces in Virginia and West Virginia 
had suffered from too many generals. Accordingly, 
late in June, he consolidated the armies of McDowell, 
Banks, and Fremont into a single army to be called the 
Army of Virginia. Again he looked westward, and to 
command this army selected General Pope, who had 
just won the victories of New Madrid and Island No. 
10. Again the choice proved unfortunate. Fremont, 
who was Pope's senior in rank, refused to serve under 

389 



390 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

him and was transferred in favor of Sigel. Pope, 
himself, antagonized his new command by an address 
in which he said, " I have come from the West where 
we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from 
an army whose business it has been to seek the enemy 
and to beat him wherever found; whose policy has t 
been attack and not defence." The implied superi- 
ority of the Western over the Eastern soldier was not 
at all relished by the latter. 

General Halleck's first act was to withdraw the 
Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula. Though 
he visited that army in its trenches at Malvern Hill, 
within sight of the smoke of Richmond's chimneys; 
though he saw the great stores of provisions and mu- 
nitions of war gathere'd there; though McClellan 
pleaded to be allowed to cross the James and attack 
Richmond from the South, isolating that city from the 
Confederacy and following the lines that Grant fol- 
lowed successfully three years later, he peremptorily 
ordered the Army of the Potomac back to Washington. 
In the campaign for Richmond that followed it took 
second place. The Army of Virginia was in the 
van. 

General Lee was keenly aware that Halleck's acces- 
sion to power meant a decisive change in the Federal 
plan of campaign. His army was between Pope and 
McClellan, superior to either, but he dared not attack 
either lest the other should take advantage of his 
being thus engaged to slip into Richmond. It was 
vital to know which of the two was to advance. Good 
luck, in the person of Colonel John S. Mosby, the 
famous Confederate cavalry ranger, brought him the 
intelligence that troops were being sent from Fortress 
Monroe up the Rappahannock River. This indicated 
that Pope was to be reenforced, and probably that the 
attack on Richmond would be made by his army. Lee 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 391 

determined to attack, it before the reenforcements could 
arrive. 

Pope's army was at Culpepper Courthouse, con- 
fronted by Jackson at Gordonville with twenty thou- 
sand men. A few miles only separated the armies and 
at Cedar Mountain, about half-way between the two 
headquarters, General Banks came upon the Confeder- 
ates and boldly attacked them. He had but 
about 7,500 men, and was confronted by Jack- 
son's whole army — though of this fact he was not 
aware. Despite the odds against them, the Tederals 
fought so well that the Confederate lines were broken 
and Jackson's own presence in the melee was necessary 
to save his army from a rout. Once thus rallied, 
however, they swept upon the Federals and by sheer 
force of numbers pushed them from the field. Both 
sides claimed the victory. " The enemy has retreated 
under cover of the night," wrote Pope. " Our cav- 
alry and artillery are in pursuit." " On the evening 
of the 9th instant," said Jackson in his report, " God 
blessed our arms with another victory." 

Two days after this affair at Cedar Mountain, Lee 
arrived at Gordonsville. He had about fifty-five thou- 
sand effective men, and knowing that McClellan was 
even then moving his army by land and water from 
Harrison's Landing, he wished to attack Pope at once. 
Pope avoided battle except under odds in his favor, in- 
trenching himself on the northern bank of the Rappa- 
hannock where his enemy would have a river to cross 
and steep hills to climb to get at him. While Lee 
was pondering the problem, " Jeb " Stuart came in 
from a cavalry raid with a captured portfolio con- 
taining a lot of private papers belonging to General 
Pope. From these Lee learned that McClellan was 
coming to Pope's aid, and further that Pope himself 
believed that if the Confederates should break through 



392 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

his line on the Rappahannock he would be unable to 
withstand the attack. The intelligence spurred Lee to 
new activity. 

The strength of the Federal position on the farther 
side of the river made Lee averse to attacking it 
directly. Moreover, heavy rains had made the stream 
unfordable and he determined upon a flanking move- 
ment which, while audacious and full of peril, worked 
out admirably in the end. Jackson, with his foot 
cavalry, was, as usual, chosen to deliver the first blow 
and sent off on a two days' march around Pope's right, 
through the mountains and to the rear of the Fed- 
eral army. Twenty-four thousand men followed 
Jackson, leaving twenty-five thousand under Lee con- 
fronting Pope. This was the latter's opportunity. 
He outnumbered either Jackson or Lee and could 
have destroyed either. But though dense columns 
of dust betrayed Jackson's movement the Federal 
general merely concluded that he was marching back 
to the Shenandoah Valley, and contented himself with 
notifying Washington to that erroneous effect. By 
nightfall Jackson had a spur of the Blue Ridge be- 
tween him and the Federals and was marching north 
as fast as his wearied soldiers could move. The 
second day of the march Thoroughfare Gap was 
reached, through which he turned eastward to reach 
the Federal rear. That would have been the place 
to block him. The Gap is but a hundred yards wide, 
the centre filled by a turbulent rushing stream, while 
the mountains rise precipitously on either side. One 
battery and one regiment posted there could hold an 
army in check. 

Jackson passed through safely. Pope was still Ig- 
norant of the menace of his movement. Stuart's cav- 
alry hovered about, taking In all persons who might 
carry the news to the Federals. The telegraph wires 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 393 

of course were promptly cut, which puzzled the Union 
commander. But Pope, misconstruing the reason for 
the sudden silence of his telegraph key, sent only one 
regiment to investigate, which found too late that 
Jackson with thirty-fiv-e regiments had blocked the line. 
The first prize won by the Confederates was Manassas 
Junction, Pope's base and the storehouse of all his 
supplies. 

What a prize it was ! and with what zest did the 
half-starved Confederates set out to plunder the vast 
depot in which were housed the provisions for an 
army of sixty thousand men ! Jackson looked on in- 
dulgently as his men clothed and fed themselves from 
the spoil of the enemy. One precaution only he took. 
" The first order that General Jackson issued," writes 
Major Mason, " was to knock out the heads of hun- 
dreds of barrels of whiskey, wine, brandy, etc.. In- 
tended for the army. I shall never forget the scene 
when this was done. Streams of spirits ran like 
water through the sands of Manassas, and the soldiers 
on hands and knees drank it greedily from the ground 
as it ran." 

" 'Twas a curious sight," writes another eye-wit- 
ness, " to see our ragged and famished men helping 
themselves to every imaginable article of luxury or 
necessity, whether of clothing, food, or what not. 
For my part I got a toothbrush, a box of candles, a 
quantity of lobster salad, a barrel of coffee, and other 
things which I forget. The scene utterly beggared 
description. Our men had been living on roasted corn 
since crossing the Rappahannock, and we had brought 
no wagons, so we could carry away little of the riches 
before us. But the men could eat one meal at least. 
So they were marched up, and as much of everything 
eatable served out as they could carry. To see a 
starving man eating lobster salad and drinking Rhine 



394 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

wine, barefooted and in tatters, was curious; the whole 
thing was indescribable." 

Though in the heart of his enemy's territory, with 
Federal troops on all sides save that by which he 
had entered — the narrow opening of Thoroughfare 
Gap — Jackson halted to let his troops enjoy this one 
brief hour of plenty. " In view of the abundance," 
writes one of the foot cavalry, " it was not an easy 
matter to determine what we should eat and drink 
and wherewithal we should be clothed; one was limited 
in his choice to only so much as he could personally 
transport, and the one thing needful in each individual 
case was not always readily found. However, as the 
day wore on, an equitable distribution of our wealth 
was effected by barter, upon a crude and irregular 
tariff in which the rule of supply and demand was 
somewhat complicated by fluctuating estimates of the 
imminence of marching orders. A mounted man 
would offer large odds in shirts or blankets for a pair 
of spurs or a bridle; and while in anxious quest of 
a pair of shoes I fell heir to a case of cavalry half- 
boots, which I would gladly have exchanged for the 
object of my search. For a change of underclothing 
and a pot of French mustard I owe grateful thanks to 
the major of the Twelfth Pennsylvania cavalry, with 
regrets that I could not use his library. Whiskey 
was, of course, at a high premium, but a keg of lager 
— a drink less popular then than now, went begging 
in our company." 

All too soon for the greedy soldiers the drums 
beat, and the order was given out to make a huge 
bonfire of all the stores that could not be carried away. 
Some idea of the extent of this task may be derived 
from an enumeration of the amount of arms and 
stores that were at Manassas when Jackson fell upon 
the place. Forty-eight pieces of artillery were there, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 395 

250 horses with equipments; 200 new tents; 10 loco- 
motives; 2 railway trains of enormous size loaded 
with millions of dollars' worth of stores; 50,000 
pounds of bacon; 1,000 barrels of beef; 20,000 barrels 
of pork; several thousand barrels of flour, and an im- 
mense amount of forage. 

The Confederacy, with the blockade already making 
itself felt, needed those supplies badly but there was 
no time then for saving them. The night before, Lee 
and Longstreet had marched from Gordonsville and 
were making for Jackson's position. Pope had at 
last discovered what was afoot and was coming, horse, 
foot, and guns, to demolish Jackson before the others 
could arrive. Narrowly did the main Confederate 
army escape being caught in Thoroughfare Gap, as 
the famous Ricketts battery was posted there for a 
time but withdrawn before Pope suspected that the 
Confederates were coming by that route. Perhaps 
some thought of this kind flitted through the mind of 
the Confederate leader, but if so he showed no sign 
of trepidation. It was while the storehouses were 
blazing, and the Federal guns in the distance roaring 
more and more loudly, that Major Roy Mason walked 
boldly up to Jackson and said: 

" General, we are all of us desperately uneasy about 
Longstreet and the situation, and I have come over 
on my own account to ask you the question: Has 
Longstreet passed Thoroughfare Gap successfully? " 

It was a decided violation of all rules of military 
etiquette for a subordinate officer to put such a ques- 
tion to the commanding general. Jackson smiled in- 
dulgently and replied: 

" Go back to your command and say, ' Longstreet 
is through, and we are going to whip in the next 
battle.' " 

Meanwhile Jackson was seeking a spot whereon he 



396 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

could, with the greatest degree of security, withstand 
the expected assault of Pope, and hold his army to- 
gether until the coming of Lee and Longstreet. He 
found it on the field of Bull Run — that field with 
which his name was already linked and where he had 
won the title " Stonewall." Across one end of that 
field he remembered ran an uncompleted railway em- 
bankment fit for defensive purposes, and thither he 
moved his army. There was sharp fighting before 
he reached the spot. Captured orders from General 
McDowell revealed to the Confederates certain of 
Pope's plans with the result that a marching Federal 
division was taken in the flank and badly cut up. All 
the while Pope was in ignorance of Jackson's where- 
abouts, and was blindly feeling about for him. 

Morning came — the 29th of August. Jackson had 
found the position he sought for — a steep railway 
embankment, running from Bull Run to the Warren- 
ton turnpike, along which Longstreet was to advance. 
The latter commander had passed the Gap, and was 
coming down the pike with rapid strides. General 
Pope had found the enemy he had sought unsuccess- 
fully at Manassas and at Centreville, and by ten o'clock 
opened his attack. 

A great battle does not often possess the spectacular 
features with which the fancy of the civilian is in- 
clined to invest it. Occasionally some magnificent dis- 
play of valor, some dashing charge in full view of 
both armies, like the charge of the Guards at Water- 
loo or Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, decides by its 
success or failure the fortunes of the day. More 
often, though, a great battle is made up of a score 
of simultaneous movements, no two of which can be ob- 
served by the same spectator. Here a charging regi- 
ment; there a division stubbornly holding a critical 
position; at another spot a battery fighting an artillery 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 397 

duel with another battery a mile away; trees, hills, or 
ravines hiding the supporting divisions one from the 
other; a hundred thousand men engaged and perhaps 
scarce a thousand visible at one time from one point 
of view. To direct such a contest demands the great- 
est genius on the part of the commanding general. 
The utmost he can hope for in the way of personal 
observation is a post on some eminence whence he 
can at least look down upon the woods and fields in 
which his men are fighting. Of the actual fighting 
he can see little or nothing. His ear must be trained 
to catch the sound of cannon, that he may tell whether 
a battery at some decisive point is doing its duty. 
From the rattle of the musketry he must judge whether 
his lines are advancing or being driven back, and how 
fierce the fighting is at any point. A cloud of dust 
tells him of troops marching along a road, and he 
must have the topography of the battle field and the 
positions of both armies well in mind, so that he may 
know whether the dust means reenforcements for the 
enemy or aid for himself. 

The battle of the 29th of August, known generally 
as the battle of Groveton, was preeminently a contest 
such as here described. The field extended over a 
great expanse of wooded country, but little in- 
tersected by roads. Jackson's troops, as we have 
said, were posted along the line of an unfinished rail- 
road that extended from the bank of Bull Run across 
the Warrenton turnpike. This roadbed was at some 
points an embankment, at others an excavation, — 
everywhere it was an admirable defensive work. Be- 
fore it extended a dense strip of woods well filled with 
Jackson's skirmishers. 

It was of course vital to Pope that he should crush 
Jackson before Lee and Longstreet could come up. 
To this end he hurled against the Confederate line 



398 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

his very strongest regiments. The fighting was fierce 
and bloody. Grover went into the fight with 1,500 
men and in twenty minutes came out minus 480. 
Gregg lost 630 men and all his field officers except 
two. At points along the railroad embankment the 
fighting was hand-to-hand with bayonets and clubbed 
muskets. General Phil Kearny only, of the Federal 
leaders, was able to break through the hedge of fire 
and lead at the railway embankment. But he was 
unable to hold the position that had cost him dear. 
Late in the afternoon the Confederates in their turn 
advanced and by nightfall the Union troops were 
driven from the field. Pope thought himself victo- 
rious and sent an enthusiastic telegram to Washing- 
ton, but not only had he been beaten in the action of 
the day but he had failed to prevent the junction of 
Jackson and Longstreet. These two were now in 
touch with Lee not far away, so that, though he did 
not know it that night. Pope was facing a battle on 
the morrow with the whole Confederate army. 

During the night of the 30th of August the Con- 
federates retired from the advanced ground they had 
won during that day to their original position in the 
railway cut, with connecting lines forming a funnel, 
or sort of huge V into which an attacking army must 
charge under a crossfire from both sides. Early in 
the morning Pope conceived the idea that the enemy 
was retreating and sent out orders to all his chiefs 
for a " pursuit." When the attack begun the Fed- 
erals found it was no disordered fleeing enemy they 
had encountered, but one very calm and confident in 
a strong position. 

Under the hot noonday sun the Federals advanced 
to the assault. Heintzelmann, Porter, Sigel, Reno, and 
Reynolds were all in the attacking column. They ad- 
vanced north of the turnpike, little suspecting that 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 399 

they were marching straight into the jaws of the Con- 
federate lion. The lower jaw — Longstreet's corps — 
was south of the turnpike. We shall soon see it 
closed in upon the upper jaw, crushing the Union army 
between. Over on the Henry hill and Chinn hill, 
about three-quarters of a mile from Jackson's line, 
the Union guns were booming away, throwing their 
shells over the charging lines of blue and dropping 
them where the ranks of tattered gray-coats were 
lying close to the railway embankment for shelter. 

Suddenly Reynolds, who of all the Union com- 
manders was nearest Longstreet's lines, caught sight of 
a crowd of gray-backs in the woods on his left flank. 
He sent a courier to McDowell, who was command- 
ing this operation which Pope was pleased to term 
a pursuit. McDoweir ordered him to abandon the 
charge, and change front to meet this flank attack. 
This he did while the rest swept on to overwhelm 
Jackson. 

Grandly and resistlessly the serried ranks of Por- 
ter's and Sigel's divisions swept on tOAvard the railway 
grade where the veterans of the Shenandoah Valley 
waited to receive them. General Bradley T. John- 
son's brigade was posted in what was known as the 
" deep cut." Here the fighting was fiercest. " They 
stormed my position," he writes of the blue-coats 
under Porter, " deploying in the woods in brigade 
and then charging in a run, line after line, brigade 
after brigade, up the hill, on the thicket held by the 
Forty-eighth, and the railroad cut occupied by the Forty- 
second. . . . Before the railroad cut the fight was most 
obstinate. I saw a Federal flag hold its position for 
an hour within ten yards of a flag of one of the reg- 
iments in the cut, and go down six or eight times; 
and after the fight one hundred dead men were lying 
twenty yards frorn the cut, some of them within two 



400 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

feet of it. The men fought until their ammunition 
was exhausted, and then threw stones. Lieutenant 

of the battalion killed one with a stone, and I 

saw him after the fight with his skull fractured. Dr. 
Richard P. Johnson, on my volunteer staff, having 
no arms of any kind, was obliged to have recourse 
to this means of offence from the beginning. As line 
after line surged up the hill, time after time, led up 
by their officers, they were dashed back on one an- 
other, until the whole field was covered with a con- 
fused mass of struggling, running, routed Yankees." 

So far as the Confederates were concerned, there 
seems to be corroboration of the stone-throwing army. 
Lieutenant Healy of Brockenburgh's brigade writes: 
*' Saturday we received urgent orders to reenforce a 
portion of our line in the centre, which was about to 
give way. The troops occupying this position had 
expended their ammunition, and were defending them- 
selves with rocks which seemed to have been picked 
or blasted out of the bed of the railroad, chips and 
slivers of stone which many were collecting and others 
were throwing." 

Of course a defence of this kind cannot long be 
maintained, and Jackson sent to Lee for reenforce- 
ments. Lee sent the courier on to Longstreet. That 
general was found sitting on his horse on the knob 
of the hill, whence he could watch the progress of 
the attack upon his colleague. The whole Union 
army, he says, " seemed to surge up against Jackson 
as if to crush him with an overwhelming mass." 

" General Jackson is hard pressed, and General Lee 
directs that you send reenforcements to his aid," said 
the courier to Longstreet. The general nods, but 
sent no troops to Jackson's aid. He could do better 
than that. The spot on which he stood commanded 
a magnificent view of the Union charge, and a battery 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 401 

posted there would sweep the ground over which Por- 
ter's men were charging. Three batteries were called 
up, twelve guns in all. The gunners bent to their 
deadly work with a will. Soon all twelve cannon 
were flaming and smoking and booming. The effect 
of this flanking fire upon the Federal forces was im- 
mediate. Thrice they were thrown into confusion, 
and thrice they re-formed their shattered ranks. Then 
while the guns were still hurling an iron storm against 
Porter's lines, Longstreet called up his infantry, or- 
dered a charge, and this whole body of fresh Confed- 
erate troops went sweeping down upon the wearied 
Union army. 

Nothing was now left for Pope but to save what 
he could from the wreck; to get his army off the 
field and out of danger with. the least possible loss. 
This he did with marked ability. The hill on which 
stands the Henry house — the very spot where the 
fighting was most vicious on the day of the first Bull 
Run — proved the key to the situation now. There 
Pope stationed a regiment of regulars, against whose 
inflexible front the enemy beat in vain. Meantime 
the remainder of the Union army marched sullenly 
and sadly from the field, and wended its way through 
the smoky, rainy night, over rough and crowded roads, 
toward Centreville. It had been Bull Run repeated, 
save that in this second battle the retreat of the Union 
army was orderly, and not a rout. 

These battles fought on the 28th, 29th, and 30th 
of August are variously named. The fighting on the 
first two days is generally called the battle of Grove- 
ton; that on the last day is called by Northern writers 
the second battle of Bull Run, by Southerners the 
second battle of Manassas. Perhaps as the latter won 
they should be entitled to name it, but literary usage 
is against them. 



402 



STORY OF OUR ARMY 



The losses of the whole campaign were: 

Confederates: 1,553 killed, 7,812 wounded, 109 
missing; total 9,474. 

Federals: 1,747 killed, 8,452 wounded, 4,263 
captured; total 14,462. 

The Confederates picked up thirty cannon and 
twenty thousand small arms on the field of Bull Run. 

Out of the battle grew the case of General Fitz-John 
Porter which was fought for years in the public prints 
and in Congress. Pope charged that Porter dis- 
obeyed an order to attack Jackson and he was dis- 
missed from the service. Porter claimed that the 
order was based on the belief that Longstreet was 
not on the field, and that to throw his ten thousand 
men on Longstreet's thirty thousand would have been 
suicidal. 

Many years afterward General Grant thus summed 
up in two diagrams this historic controversy. The 
first diagram depicts the situation as General Pope 
conceived it. 



•^^v 




^-^ 



JACKSON 



POPE, 



Clearly if this had been the way the armies stood 
it would have been Porter's duty to attack. But 
Grant's second diagram showed the situation as Por- 
ter saw it, and as it really was. ■ 




JACf<SON 



POPS, 



" - - »^-^r ""T^ 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 403 

And this put a very different face on the matter. 

After more than twenty-five years of constant effort 
.General Porter convinced the United States Congress 
of the justice of his cause, and the rank and honors 
of which he had been deprived by drumhead court- 
martial in 1862 were restored to him by act of Con- 
gress in 1887. 

September 2 President Lincoln ordered Pope's army 
back to the intrenchments before Washington. Mc- 
Clellan's army was already on the way thither and 
thus, after practically two months of fighting and 
marching, the campaigns against Richmond by the 
Peninsula and by the direct southern route, ended 
precisely where they had begun. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Lee Invades Maryland and Virginia — Harper's Ferry Recaptured — 
Frederick Entered — Battle of South Mountain — Battle of 
Antietam. 

Lee felt that the withdrawal of Pope must be fol- 
lowed by some vigorous offensive action on the part 
of the Confederates. Their defensive campaign 
had been wholly successful. Both McClellan and 
Pope had been beaten back from Richmond, and 
the latter had been deprived of further command. 
It was time for the victors to take the initiative. 
Washington was In one of Its perennial panics, as 
frightened as Richmond had been when McClellan 
was peering over its fortifications. But Lee did not 
dream of attacking the capital directly. The forts 
on the Virginia side of the Potomac were too strong 
and too well garrisoned for that. But to " keep up 
the scare " he determined to lead his army of fifty- 
five thousand men across the Potomac into Maryland. 
Well he knew that, though victorious, that army was 
in no condition for an invading campaign. The 
morale of the troops was excellent but their equip- 
ment was miserable. " The army," he wrote Presi- 
dent Davis, " is not properly equipped for an invasion 
of an enemy's territory. It lacks much of the mate- 
rial of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals 
being much reduced, and the men are poorly pro- 
vided with clothes, and in thousands of instances are 
destitute of shoes." 

Nevertheless he felt it necessary to keep alive the 
apprehension felt at Washington. Furthermore, he 

404 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 405 

saw that by entering Maryland and Pennsylvania he 
could destroy the two great east and west railroad 
systems, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and 
Ohio, thus handicapping the Federals In moving their 
armies. A victory over McClellan would give him 
a free hand with Washington, Baltimore, and perhaps 
Philadelphia before the western armies could be 
brought Into the theatre of war. 

Accordingly on the 4th of September the Federal 
army forded the Potomac near Leesburg over several 
fords, and advancing rapidly concentrated at Fred- 
erick. The Confederates always looked upon Mary- 
land as friendly territory, and Lee expected warm wel- 
comes and some increase in force by enlistments; but 
in this he was cruelly disappointed. In Frederick he 
found closed shops, locked doors, drawn shutters, and 
empty streets. It was there that the incident of Bar- 
bara Frietchie, Immortalized In Whittier's poem, Is 
supposed to have occurred, but of the men in gray who 
marched through those silent streets that day none 
recall the " old gray head " of Barbara, nor that 

All day long that free flag tossed 
Over the heads of* the marching host. 

The nearest approach to the legend Is thus told by 
Colonel Douglass who rode by the side of Jackson 
through the town : " In Middletown two very pretty 
girls with ribbons of red, white, and blue floating from 
their hair, and small Union flags In their hands, 
rushed out of a house as we passed, came to the curb- 
stone, and with much laughter waved their flags de- 
fiantly In the face of the general. He bowed and 
raised his hat, and turning with his quiet smile to his 
staff, said : * We evidently have no friends In this 



4o6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

town.' And this is about the way he would have 
treated Barbara Frietchie." 

While at Frederick, Lee determined to move west 
through the mountains at Turner's Gap and descend 
upon Harrisburg. Such a move would leave Har- 
per's Ferry with a garrison of eleven thousand men 
in his rear which might prove dangerous should he 
have to retreat. Accordingly he sent off the ever- 
ready Jackson to capture that post. McClellan quickly 
learned of this apparent return of the Confederate 
army to Virginia and wrote exultantly, " From all I 
can gather Secesh is skedaddling." It was a weak- 
ness of the Union commanders of that day to discern 
in the most skilful tactics of Lee and Jackson only 
panic-stricken flight. 

Jackson accomplished this mission promptly. The 
fort, which would have been untenable, was surren- 
dered with a promptitude which amazed and relieved 
its assailants. What they had expected is told by 
this recollection of one of the young Confederate lieu- 
tenants : 



A few strides brought me to the edge of an abattis which extended 
solidly for two hundred yards, a narrow bare field being between the 
abatis and the foot of the fort, which was garnished with thirty guns. 
They were searching the abattis lazily with grape-shot, which flew 
uncomfortably near at times. I thought I had never seen a more 
dangerous trap in my life. I went back, and Austin Brockenbrough 
asked, "How is it?" "Well," said I, "we'll say our prayers and 
go in like men." "Not as bad as that?" "Every bit: see for 
yourself." He went, and came back looking very grave. Mean- 
while from the east, northwest, and northeast our cannon opened, 
and were answered by the Federal guns from Bolivar Heights. 
We were down in a ravine, we could see nothing, we could only 
hear. Presently along came the words, " Prepare to charge ! " We 
moved steadily up the hill; the sun had just risen; some one said: 
"Colonel, what is that on the fort?" "Halt," cried the colonel, 
" they have surrendered." A glad shout burst from ten thousand 
men. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 407 

The scene of the actual surrender, as described by 
Jackson's biographer, John Esten Cooke, throws a 
light on the personal side of the war: 

Jackson had been up for the greater part of the night, and for 
many preceding nights had scarcely slept an hour, although he 
required more rest than any general in the army. He was now 
exhausted, and had no sooner satisfied himself that the place had 
fallen than he sat down on the ground, leaned his elbow on a log, 
and was asleep in a moment. Meantime General Hill had com- 
municated with the Federal General White, who had succeeded to 
the command in consequence of a mortal wound received by Gen- 
eral Miles, and now came in company with that officer to arrange 
with Jackson the terms of the surrender. The contrast between 
General White's neat uniform and Jackson's dingy coat is repre- 
sented as having been very striking; and the Confederate com- 
mander wore an old hat less imposing even than his yellow cap, 
of which some lady in Martinsburg had robbed him. General 
White probably regarded with some curiosity this singular specimen 
of a Southern general, and allowed Hill to open the interview. 
The latter said to Jackson : 

" General, this is General White of the United States army." 
Jackson made a courteous movement, but seemed ready to fall 
asleep again, when Hill added : 

" He has come to arrange the terms of surrender." 

Jackson made no reply, and looking under his slouch hat, Hill 
found that he was asleep. He was again roused, and at last 
raising his head with difficulty, said to the Federal commander : 

" The surrender must be unconditional, General. Every indul- 
gence can be granted afterwards." 

As he finished speaking, Jackson's head fell, and unable to con- 
tend against his drowsiness he again fell asleep and the interview 
terminated. 

While Jackson was thus discharging his commission 
at Harper's Ferry McClellan discovered with a shock 
that his enemy was not " skedaddling." A Union sol- 
dier picked up in the street of Frederick, which the 
Federals occupied when the Confederates abandoned 
it, a bunch of three cigars. An officer, standing by, 
caught a glimpse of the paper in which the cigars were 
wrapped and it proved to be a copy of Lee's order for 
the concentration of the Confederate army at Boones- 



4o8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

boro. Straightway McCIellan set out in pursuit. 
" Jeb " Stuart, the eyes and ears of Lee's army, found 
out in some way that McCIellan had the order and 
warned his chief, who promptly filled the hillsides 
commanding Turner's Gap, for which the Federals 
were headed, with artillery and infantry and waited. 
General Burnside had been sent by McCIellan to open 
the way through the Gap, but did not expect to en- 
counter any serious resistance. On the way thither 
his advance party met a Colonel Moore, who had been 
captured by the Confederates, paroled, and was now 
riding home. 

"Where in the world did you come from?" sung 
out an officer as he was recognized. 

'* Captured by the enemy three days ago. Paroled 
and sent back to-day," was the answer. " But where 
are you going? " 

*' Oh, up into Turner's Gap on a reconnoissance." 

"My God! be careful," was Moore's exclamation 
as he saw the slender force behind him; then suddenly 
recollecting himself. " But I am paroled. I can say 
nothing." 

He had just come from the Gap. He knew that 
instead of a puny rear-guard, it was defended by more 
than twelve thousand m.en under Longstreet and D. 
H. Hill. Honor would not permit him to warn his 
comrades of the trap into which they were marching. 
He was on parole, and could neither fight nor give 
advice, but his hasty exclamation had aroused the sus- 
picion of the Federals, and they took along another 
brigade of troops and advanced warily. 

All day the battle raged in the Gap and on the slopes 
of South Mountain. The hours were anxious ones 
for Lee, for he was fighting to hold the pass until 
Jackson and McLaws could get back from Harper's 
Ferry. Without them he had but nineteen thousand 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 409 

men to oppose to McClellan's army. Wherefore the 
Confederates exerted every effort to hold the pass until 
night and, being successful in that, stole away in the 
darkness to Sharpsburg. The next day Lee drew up 
his army in line of battle on the field known as Antie- 
tam to Northern historians, as Sharpsburg to South- 
ern writers. His troops were by this time reunited, 
though even with them all in line he had but fifty-five 
thousand against McClellan's ninety thousand. Long- 
street wanted to abandon the position, recross the 
Potomac, and fight again in Virginia, but Lee, though 
he must have seen that the Maryland campaign 
was politically a failure, felt that a battle was nec- 
essary to keep up the morale of his troops. Jack- 
son agreed with him and the battle was fought — and 
lost. 

The battle of Antietam, fought on the 17th of Sep- 
tember, 1862, was one of the fiercest and most decisive 
of the Civil War. General Alexander, an authorita- 
tive military statistician says: " It was the bloodiest 
battle ever fought upon this continent." The historian, 
John Codman Ropes, refers to it as " one of the 
bloodiest battles of the war " and says further, " it is 
likely that more men were killed and wounded on the 
17th of September than on any single day in the whole 
war." 

Lee's army occupied a ridge about two and one half- 
miles long on the side of Antietam Creek, farthest from 
the enemy. Four bridges spanned the creek, which 
was also fordable at almost any point and was not 
therefore a very serious military obstacle. Indeed, 
the greater part of the Union army passed the creek 
during the afternoon and night prior to the battle. 
The heaviest fighting fell to the lot of Hooker's corps, 
who had first crossed the stream. 

Scarce a hundred yards in front of Hooker's pickets. 



4IO STORY OF OUR ARMY 

who were facing south, was the picket line of the 
enemy. Back of this line and to the east was a clump 
of trees called the East woods, which sheltered a Con- 
federate battery. A line of gray-clad soldiers, crouch- 
ing behind roughly built breastworks of fence-rails, 
extended from the East woods across the turnpike to 
the point where a spot of gleaming white, almost hidden 
in the trees, indicated the position of a little Dunker 
church, destined to gain a fame as permanent as that of 
another little country chapel that gave its name to the 
battle of Shiloh. Back of the Dunker church were 
the shady recesses of the West woods. Between the 
two woods was a rolling stretch of land cut up into 
cornfields. 

The morning of the 17th was chill and damp. A 
dense fog hung over the hostile armies. The summits 
of the neighboring mountains were lost in the clouds. 
Cold and cramped with their bivouac, the soldiers of 
both armies unrolled themselves from their blankets 
and gulped down their coffee and bread. While they 
were eating the firing along the picket line began, then 
a Confederate battery near the East woods began to 
boom out defiance to Hooker and his men. The chal- 
lenge was promptly accepted, and Hooker pushed for- 
ward into the cornfields between the East and West 
woods. 

The attack was manfully met and in the main re- 
pelled. On Hooker's right Doubleday was suddenly 
taken in flank by a dash of the Confederates from 
the clump of trees called the West woods. There 
was attack and repulse, charge and counter charge for 
two hours. The fighting was mainly in a cornfield and 
the plowed ground and standing stalks made the day's 
work no easier. Hooker tells of one ghastly incident 
of such a field: 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 411 

We had not proceeded far before I discovered that a heavy 
force of the enemy had taken possession of a corn-field (I have 
since learned about a thirty-acre field) on my immediate front, 
and from the sun's rays falling on their bayonets projecting above 
the corn I could see that the field was filled with the enemy with 
arms in their hands, standing apparently at " support arms." In- 
structions were immediately given for the assemblage of all my 
spare batteries near at hand, of which I think there were five or 
six, to spring into battery on the right of this field and to open 
with canister at once. In the time I am writing every stalk of 
corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as 
closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay 
in rows, precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments 
before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal 
battle field. Those that escaped fled in the opposite direction from 
our advance, and sought refuge behind the trees, fences, and stone 
ledges, nearly on a line with the Dunker church. 

The battle of Anlietam was peculiar in that it was 
fought by one command after another instead of a 
simultaneous attack of the whole Union army. This 
plan of action proved to be unfortunate for McClellan. 
Having great superiority in numbers he might have 
crushed the Confederates had he thrown his whole 
strength upon them at once. By sending in his divi- 
sions seriatim he allowed them to be beaten, or at 
least stood off in detail. For example, Hooker's at- 
tack upon Jackson was seen to be a failure after two 
hours' heavy fighting. His division was therefore 
retired and Mansfield, who had spent the time only a 
mile in the rear, was ordered forward in his place. 
Probably had the two made the attack jointly, Jackson 
would have been carried away and crushed. As it 
was, Mansfield was driven back as Hooker had been, 
Hood coming to Jackson's aid and completing the 
Federal discomfiture. General Mansfield himself was 
killed. His men were wavering before a cornfield 
where no enemy was to be seen when he rode up. No 
colors were flying there. The uniforms of the men 
among the corn could not be plainly seen. Might 



412 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

they not be friends? He ordered his men to cease 
firing, and himself rode forward to reconnoitre. 
Straight to the front he rode, a conspicuous object 
with his white hair streaming in the wind. An old 
Indian fighter, he knew no fear. As he came to 
the front rank of a Maine regiment which led the 
van, a captain and a sergeant begged him to go no 
farther. 

" See, General," they cried. " Those are the enemy. 
See their gray coats. They are aiming at you and at 
us now." 

*' Yes, yes, you are right," responded Mansfield, but 
before he could say more he was hit. He tried to 
turn his horse, but the animal too had been struck and 
would not obey the rein. Then the men lifted the 
general from his steed, and carried him tenderly to the 
rear, where it was discovered that his wound was 
mortal. 

There had been two hours of Hooker's attack, and 
Mansfield, too, was beaten off by nine in the morning. 
Sumner was next ordered forward. Only one division 
of his corps was ordered into action — Sedgwick's, a 
division of veterans led by an old-time Indian fighter. 
Sumner rode by Sedgwick's side into the fight. 

As the Union troops moved forward across the open 
space between the cornfield and the West woods a 
kind of lull fell upon the battle field. Except for the 
artillery fire from Stuart's guns the Union advance was 
unimpeded until the edge of the woods was reached. 
But all this time they were marching blindly into an 
ambush. On the left flank was a country road, worn 
deep with ruts, and washed by the rain until it had 
become a gully. The ground rose sharply before it, 
and men could stand upright in the narrow lane and 
still be hidden from the sight of those in the Union 
lines. As Sedgwick's division, in three parallel lines, 




Patriot Publishing' Co. 

THE DEAD IN "BLOODY LANE 

From " Photographic History of Civil War' 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 413 

was moving steadily forward toward the West woods, 
the Confederates were stealthily sending regiment after 
regiment down into this sunken road to take Sedgwick 
in the flank and rear. He wondered that no hostile fire 
came from the woods in his front. Just then an officer 
on the left of the Union lines caught a sight of the 
troops in the sunken road. 

" General! Look! We are surrounded! " he shouts. 
The alarm came too late. Already the Confederate 
fire was delivered. Before the withering storm of 
lead, coming from so unsuspected a quarter, the blue- 
coats fell in heaps. Their lines were thrown into dis- 
order. 

" My God! " shouted Sumner. " We must get out 
of this," and he galloped up and down the lines seek- 
ing to form them anew. But it was too late. Little 
by little, the lines crumbled away. The bravest sol- 
diers in the army would be unnerved to find themselves 
suddenly in an ambush. The bravest in the world 
could not stand against that murderous fire. The Con- 
federates advanced. They pressed upon the Union 
flank. They swung around and took Sedgwick's men in 
the rear. Sedgwick was struck by a bullet and fell 
from his horse. Sumner saw how the battle was 
going and galloped away to the nearest signal station. 
" Reenforcements are badly needed. Our troops are 
giving way," he signalled to McClellan. Even while 
the flags that carried the message were waving the one- 
sided contest ended, and Sedgwick's division was prac- 
tically wiped out. Over two thousand men had been 
killed or wounded without inflicting upon the enemy 
any material loss. From the time the Confederates 
sprung from their ambush and poured in their first vol- 
ley, until the bruised and bleeding remnants of Sedg- 
wick's division left the field, was scarce fifteen minutes. 
General Hood himself declared that the short and 



414 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

bloody combat was " the most terrible clash of arms 
that he had ever witnessed during the war." 

French and Richardson came up after Sedgwick had 
been practically obliterated. Had they been sent into 
action with him the day would probably have been 
theirs. Their attack fell upon the line of D. H. Hill, 
strongly posted in a sunken road. The attacking line 
passed through a cemetery and though the headstones 
sheltered many of the men in blue, there were more 
dead above ground in that graveyard when the bloody 
day was ended than below the sod. But this charge 
succeeded where others failed. Hill's men broke and 
streamed away across the fields with French in pursuit. 
Meantime Richardson had broken Longstreet's line, 
and the day seemed lost to the Confederates. An 
army once in retreat is driven even by a weaker force, 
and the Confederates this day were sorely outnum- 
bered. 

All sorts of expedients were resorted to, to cover up 
the weakness of the Confederate line. At one point 
which seemed to invite attack the teamsters, cooks, and 
other undisciplined and unarmed camp-followers were 
formed in line, in the hope that the sight of so large a 
body of men would keep the Federals from choosing 
that particular point for an attack. At another point 
two guns of the Washington artillery alone held the 
Federals in check at a most critical position. The 
guns were worked by officers of Longstreet's staff — for 
all the regular artillerymen had long since been shot 
down — and that officer stood quietly nearby holding 
the bridles of his staff officers' horses. A North Caro- 
lina regiment was drawn up to support the little bat- 
tery, and showed its colors boldly whenever the 
blue-coats showed signs of charging. And doubtless 
the battery would have been charged, and the Confed- 
erate centre pierced, had the Union officers known that 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 415 

the regiment supporting the guns had in its cartridge- 
boxes not one single round of ammunition! 

About three-quarters of a mile southwest of the 
town of Sharpsburg, a stone bridge spanned the sullen 
current of the Antietam. Near its eastern end were 
grouped the troops of Burnside's division. At its 
western end rows of Confederate guns posted on high 
hills, regiments of Confederate infantry behind stone- 
walls, and scores of gray-clad skirmishers lurking be- 
hind every stump-fence or bowlder that promised shel- 
ter, held it closed against all comers. With their 
artillery and their infantry, the Confederates were pre- 
pared to sweep the bridge clear of any Northern troops 
who might venture to set foot thereon. 

It was about ten o'clock in the morning that the 
order came from McClellan to Burnside to carry the 
bridge. The staff officers who stood about the general 
shrugged their shoulders meaningly when they heard 
the order. A desperate commission it was indeed. 
First a long stretch of road on the river's bank, swept 
by the enemy's fire, had to be traversed, and then the 
bridge itself, on which Longstreet could concentrate 
the fire of all the guns in the division. The lay of the 
land on the side of the creek held by the Confederates 
was such that their artillery was perfectly protected. 
The batteries of Burnside's division could do nothing 
to clear the way for the advance of the storming party. 
The soldiers who were led to the conquest of the bridge 
had nothing to do but to push bravely forward through 
the pitiless hail of missiles, in the forlorn hope that 
when the bridge was crossed there would still be enough 
of them left alive to drive away the brigade of Toombs, 
that lay snugly sheltered under a hill awaiting the 
Federal attack. 

Burnside knew how strongly the bridge was guarded 
for he had felt out with his skirmishers the Confed- 



4i6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

erate line, and had found how mercilessly the enemy's 
guns could sweep the road. But the order to take the 
bridge was peremptory and General Crook's brigade 
was first sent in. But the blue lines wavered, broke, 
and fled. Sturgis came to Crook's aid, but two charges 
were unavailing. A third rush carried the advance 
over the bridge, and a torrent of men followed to rest 
in the sheltering woods beyond and then to fall on 
Longstreet's lines. Then was the critical moment for 
the Confederates, and they were saved from destruc- 
tion only by the opportune arrival of A. P. Hill with 
two thousand fresh men from Harper's Ferry. Thus 
reenforced the men in gray in their turn attacked, 
drove the Federals from all the ground they had 
gained, and would have pushed them back across the 
creek again but that the oncoming of night closed the 
fighting. 

So ended the battle of the Antietam, or as the Con- 
federates call it, the battle of Sharpsburg. It had been 
a hard fought field. In deeds of gallantry each side 
vied with the other. The total force under Lee's 
command was scarcely one-half as great as the Union 
forces, but General McClellan's policy of sending in 
his divisions to attack one after the other, instead of 
descending upon the enemy with all his overwhelming 
force, had greatly reduced the odds against the wearers 
of the gray. On both sides the loss was heavy. 
McClellan's report fixed the Union loss at 12,469, of 
whom 2,010 were killed, 9,416 wounded, and 1,043 
missing. The exact loss of the Confederates is un- 
known but it probably differed but little from that of 
the Union forces. In his report General McClellan 
states that 2,700 of the enemy's dead were buried after 
the battle by the Federal soldiers. 

Who, then, were the victors in this desperate and 
bloody battle? 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 417 

So far as the immediate results of the fighting on the 
17th were concerned, there could be no good claim to 
victory set up by either side. The Federals acted 
upon the offensive, but they certainly made no inroads 
of any serious extent upon the enemy's position. The 
Confederates, in their turn, had not repelled the attack 
all along the line, and were certainly too much weak- 
ened by the day's fighting to rightfully claim that they 
were victorious. When the sun set that night it put 
an end to a drawn battle. 

But, as a historian of this campaign has well said, 
" for an invading army, a drawn battle is little less 
than a lost battle." So particularly was it in this case, 
for after confronting McClellan for one day, Lee 
abandoned the field and took his army out of Mary- 
land again. The cherished plan for carrying the war 
into the Northern states had failed, and we shall soon 
see the tide of war sweeping back and forth again 
across the fields and through the forests of the Old 
Dominion. 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Confederates Invade Kentucky — Louisville and Cincinnati 
Menaced — Buell's Stand at Perryville — Van Dorn Repulsed at 
Corinth — Bragg and Rosecrans Clash at Murfreesboro. 

We discontinued our story of the military events in 
the West with the battle of Shiloh, and the retreat 
of General Beauregard to Corinth, Miss. The Union 
troops followed him, but General Halleck, who was 
still in command, ordered peremptorily that no attack 
should be made or general engagement brought on. 
Thirty days or more, therefore, were spent with pick 
and shovel instead of with cannon and musket. But 
toward the end of May when the besiegers' parallels 
and approaches had closely approached the enemy's 
lines. Grant, who was second in command to Halleck, 
and much underestimated and ignored by that com- 
mander, suspected they were besieging an empty town. 
That proved to be the case. Beauregard had moved 
out not leaving a sick man, a flag, or a gun — except 
a lot of " Quakers " — as a trophy for the besiegers. 
Thereupon, as if there had not been enough delay 
already, Halleck spent two months more fortifying 
Corinth until his line of redoubts and trenches was 
so extensive that one hundred thousand men could 
scarcely adequately man them. 

While this work was in progress Halleck was called 
to chief command at Washington, and began stripping 
Corinth of men for service in Virginia. Grant suc- 
ceeded him, and General Bragg, an able soldier with 
a notable record in the Mexican war, succeeded Beau- 
regard in command of the Confederate army. Bragg 

418 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 419 

wanted action. With sudden raids and swift attacks 
he kept Grant on the alert. July 13, Forrest, the 
brilliant Confederate cavalry leader, descended swiftly 
on Murfreesboro and captured 1,700 men, 600 horses, 
4 cannon, and nearly a million dollars' worth of sup- 
plies. Bragg raked the South for reenforcements. 
Halleck systematically weakened Grant. Hearing 
that the latter planned to seize Chattanooga, Bragg 
rushed an army thither first and made it the base 
for an invasion of Kentucky. 

The Confederate army of invasion advanced in two 
columns, one led by Kirby Smith moving northward 
through eastern Tennessee and Kentucky; the other 
under Bragg keeping farther to the westward. They 
encountered no serious opposition, but they won no 
great prizes. Under really determined leaders like 
Lee or Jackson they would have taken Louisville and 
Cincinnati, both of which lay open to the spoiler. As 
it was they marched to the bank of the Ohio River and 
back again, loaded with plunder it is true, but with- 
out advancing the frontier of the Confederacy one 
mile. 

Smith found resistance only at Richmond, Ky., 
where there were a few thousand raw Union recruits 
in a camp of instruction. General Nelson, their com- 
mander, was at Lexington about twenty miles away. 
On this force the Confederates swooped down, out- 
numbering them nearly two to one. The fight that 
followed was a melee rather than a battle, for the 
rank and file of the Union troops were wholly un- 
trained and scarce one of their officers had ever seen 
a battle. 

In the midst of the fighting General Nelson sud- 
denly appeared. News of the battle had reached 
him at Lexington, and he had hastened to the field. 
He found his men routed, disheartened, half beaten 



420 S T O R Y O F O U R A R M Y 

already. " I know you are new at this business, 
boys," he said. " I'll show you how to whip the 
scamps." Up and down the lines he went, doing his 
best to instill new confidence and courage into the 
minds of his troops. Soon the storm of war burst 
again, and men fell thick and fast before the flying 
missiles. Nelson was in the thick of the fight. A man 
of colossal stature, he rode along the lines waving 
his hat and shouting: 

" Boys, if they can't hit me, they can't hit a barn 
door." 

But a stray shot brought him to the ground badly 
wounded, and his men fell back in hopeless rout be- 
fore the advance of the victorious Confederates. 
After Nelson's fall the Union forces offered no more 
resistance. " Every man for himself," was the cry. 
All semblance of military formation was lost. Scat- 
tering in all directions, the blue-coats fled before the 
foe, who followed in such hot pursuit that many a 
Northern soldier bit the dust during that disastrous 
retreat. Over 3,000 prisoners rewarded the Con- 
federates for their prowess that day, and in killed 
and wounded the Federals lost 900 more. The total 
Confederate loss was 790. 

No armed force now blocked Smith's northward 
course. The roads to Louisville and Cincinnati lay 
open to him. It is easy to imagine how depressing 
to the North would have been the capture of the lat- 
ter city. But Smith lacked the audacity and dash of 
Jackson. Instead of marching his men to their ut- 
most, and seizing the defenceless Ohio city, he went 
into camp at Lexington — most beautiful of Kentucky 
towns — and tried to recruit his army from the flower 
of Southern chivalry there abiding. In this he was 
disappointed. " The Kentuckians are slow and back- 
ward in rallying to our standard," he wrote. " Their 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 421 

hearts are ardently with us but their bluegrass and fat 
cattle are against us." Kentuckians were in fact too 
prosperous to respond enthusiastically to war's ap- 
peals. Moreover the war was getting to be an old 
story and the glamor of romance with which it had 
been invested in the days of the first outburst had 
been worn threadbare; so after two weeks of fruit- 
less endeavor Smith marched on toward Cincinnati 
only to find himself too late. While he dallied in 
Lexington General Lew Wallace, whom history will 
remember rather as a novelist than as a soldier, had 
put the city under martial law, drafted every citizen 
into the work of defence, called in the militia and 
volunteers from all the surrounding country and made 
Cincinnati, if not impregnable, at least a very tough 
nut for Smith to crack. That general evidently 
thought it too tough, for after surveying the Union 
works for a few days he fell back to join Bragg at 
Frankfort. 

General Bragg meanwhile had marched across Ten- 
nessee and nearly to the northern boundary of Ken- 
tucky, almost without firing a shot. At Frankfort, the 
capital of Kentucky, he waited for Smith to join him 
and the two together went through the farce of in- 
augurating a secessionist governor, who six hours 
later fled from the town in a panic because of the 
arrival of a detachment of Federal cavalry. Had 
not Bragg stopped for this bit of bravado he might 
have marched straight into Louisville, but he let the 
chance slip just as Smith had failed to avail himself 
of the open door to Cincinnati. 

General Buell meantime had followed the Confed- 
erates northward and himself entered Louisville, 
making it his base for operations against Bragg, who 
had by that time begun his southward march heavily 
laden with captured munitions of war. At a town 



422 STORY OFOUR ARMY 

called Perryville the Confederate commander halted 
and struck at the enemy who had been hanging per- 
sistently upon his flank. Bragg was himself in Frank- 
fort at the beginning of the battle and the Confed- 
erate command devolved upon General Polk. 

About two o'clock in the afternoon of October 7, 
reports from the Confederate picket lines indicated 
that the Federals were coming up. It was McCook's 
brigade of Sheridan's division that first appeared. 
The soldiers had been marching all day under a broil- 
ing sun, over dusty roads, and without a drop of 
water to cool their parched throats. They wanted 
water, and were ready to fight for it. In front of 
the Confederate lines was the channel of Doctor's 
Creek, a little stream then nearly dried up, but with 
a few pools of muddy water standing in its bed. 
McCook sent out his skirmishers. They advanced, 
exchanged shots with the Confederate pickets, pressed 
on and filled their canteens at the stagnant pools. 
Others followed, and the Confederates, not wishing 
to bring on a general battle, withdrew. Bad though 
the water thus gained was, it was dearly prized. A 
Union staff officer relates that, being wearied of 
making his toilet with a dry rub, he proposed to use 
a dipper full of the water on his face, when General 
Buell, who had noticed his preparations, interposed, 
ordering him to pour it back into his canteen and 
keep it for an emergency. 

Beyond a little rifle practice along the picket lines 
and some long range duels with the big guns, there 
was no fighting that day. Buell thought he had the 
whole of Bragg's army before him, and was cautious 
about bringing on an engagement, when by throwing 
in his whole force he might have swept the enemy from 
his path. 

In the morning the Confederates took the offensive. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 423 

Cheatham's division on their extreme right moved out 
and fell with terrific force on Terrill's brigade of 
Jackson's division. The Federal troops were raw, 
untrained soldiers. So far from expecting an assault 
from the enemy, they were preparing to make one 
themselves. The fury of Cheatham's assault, the fe- 
rocity of the " rebel yell," then heard by them for 
the first time, and the sight of their comrades falling 
on all sides, was too much for them. After one vol- 
ley they broke and fled. At the very first fire General 
Jackson was killed. General Terrill soon afterward 
fell while bravely trying to rally his troops. The 
Confederates pushed on mercilessly, and the left of 
the Union line was thus thrown into hopeless rout at 
the very beginning of the battle. Nine guns from 
Parsons's battery fell into the hands of the assailants, 
who turned them on the Union lines with fatal effect. 
Parsons himself had fallen ere his guns were taken. 
Revolver and sword in hand he stood by his guns, 
though his raw infantry supports went to pieces before 
the enemy's onslaught. Only when one of his men 
dragged him forcibly away would he leave his post, 
and as he retired a chance shot struck him. He lived, 
though, to fight through the war, and when the days 
of blood were over to enter the more peaceful service 
of the church. 

General Polk, who was actively engaged throughout 
the battle, had an adventure that nearly cost him his 
life, or at least his liberty. One of Bragg's staff offi- 
cers thus tells the story in the Century: 

About dark, Polk, convinced that some Confederate troops were 
firing into each other, cantered up to the colonel of the regiment 
that was firing and asked him angrily what he meant by shooting 
his own friends. The colonel, in a tone of surprise, said : 

" I don't think there can be any mistake about it. I am sure 
they are the enemy." 



424 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

"Enemy! Why, I have just left them myself. Cease firing, 
sir. What is your name?" rejoined the Confederate general. 

" I am Colonel of the Indiana. And pray, sir, who are 

you ? " 

Thus made aware that he was with a Federal regiment and 
that his only escape was to brazen it out, his dark blouse and the 
increasing obscurity happily befriending him, the Confederate gen- 
eral shook his fist in the Frederal colonel's face and promptly said : 

" I will show you who I am, sir. Cease firing at once." 

Then cantering down the line again, he shouted authoritatively 
to the men, " Cease firing." Then reaching the cover of a small 
copse, he spurred his horse and was soon back with his own corps, 
which he immediately ordered to open fire. 

It was a curious battle in which each side suffered 
serious reverses. The Confederate left was broken 
up and rolled away by Sheridan, then just beginning 
his great military career. On the other hand the 
Union left was treated in the same way by Polk. Tac- 
tically it was a drawn battle. General Buell reported 
a total loss of 4,340, of whom 916 were killed and 
2,943 wounded. General Bragg put the Confederate 
loss at about 2,500. But had Buell been on the ground 
he should have seen that his army was numerically 
superior, and by putting it all into action he could have 
swept the Confederates away. As it was they moved 
out secretly under cover of the night, and began their 
retreat from Kentucky. 

Nor from Kentucky did Bragg go empty-handed. 
His foragers had been active, and the fertile fields, the 
pastures dotted with grazing cattle, the village stores 
with well-filled shelves, had all suffered from their 
visits. All the plunder was sent in advance of the 
army to the southward. Thousands of beef cattle, 
horses, sheep, and swine were driven along by reck- 
less Texans. An interminable train of wagons, 
heavily laden with all conceivable articles, fol- 
lowed. " The wagon train of supplies," said a writer 
in the Richmond Examiner, possibly with some exag- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 425 

geration, " was forty miles long, and brought a mil- 
lion of yards of jeans, with a large amount of clothing, 
boots and shoes, and 200 wagon loads of bacon, 6,000 
barrels of pork, 1,500 mules and horses, and a large 
lot of swine." 

Said the Lexington Observer: " For four weeks 
while the Confederates were in the vicinity of Lexing- 
ton a train of cars was running daily southward, car- 
rying some property taken from the inhabitants, and 
at the same time huge wagon trains were continually 
moving for the same purpose." 

Buell pursued the retreating army to the Tennessee 
line, then returned to Bowling Green, Ky., with the 
purpose of putting his army into winter quarters at 
points which would be effective when the season for 
campaigning should reopen. Here suddenly and to 
his chagrin he was relieved from command on the 
24th of October, and superseded by General Rose- 
crans who had been in command in West Tennessee 
under Grant. We may interrupt our story of the 
more important events m East Tennessee to give some 
account of the occurrences which had led to this pro- 
motion for Rosecrans, 

When Bragg started north for Kentucky he left in 
Mississippi a force of about sixteen thousand Confed- 
erates under Van Dorn near Holly Springs, and an 
equal number under Price at Tupelo. The commands 
were independent but the two commanders were or- 
dered to cooperate in preventing Grant — who had 
fifty thousand men at Memphis, Corinth, and Jackson 
— from sending any of them north to join Buell. 
Grant, for his part, was enjoined to see that neither 
Van Dorn nor Price should slip past him and go 
North to aid Bragg. Thus watching each other the 
adversaries clashed in several small engagements. 
Price moving first swooped down upon a small Fed- 



426 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

eral force at luka, Miss., and captured a large quan- 
tity of much needed stores. Grant, by way of retalia- 
tion, sent out Rosecrans with 9,000 men, and Ord 
with 8,000 by different roads, to catch Price, who had 
about 14,000, betwixt them and gobble him up. In 
his " Memoirs " Grant says: " It looked to me that if 
Price would remain in luka until they could get there 
his annihilation was inevitable." Price did obligingly 
remain in luka, but the annihilation failed. Delay 
in marching made it impossible for both commanders 
to begin the attack at the hour fixed and Grant, who 
kept in touch with both, ordered General Ord, who 
was the more advanced, to attack when he heard the 
noise of Rosecrans's guns. The difficulty with this 
order was that a high wind might carry the sound 
away from Ord and that is precisely what happened. 
Rosecrans by hard marching had almost reached the 
Confederate lines when his advance was detected and 
he was attacked with such spirit that for a time it 
looked as though he was the one to be annihilated. 
The fight raged for two hours and was ended by dark- 
ness. Only about 4,000 men on either side were en- 
gaged, but 141 Federals and 85 Confederates lay 
dead on the field while the wounded were 613 and 
410, respectively. Ord had heard not a sound of the 
battle and rested on his arms all the afternoon. Price, 
however, had learned of his presence, and declining to 
wait for the trap to snap on him at daylight slipped 
away in the night. 

This enterprise having failed, Rosecrans was or- 
dered to Corinth, where with nineteen thousand men 
he garrisoned the prodigious works built by Halleck. 
Van Dorn, perhaps a little jealous of the prestige 
Price had gained at luka determined to attack Rose- 
crans. His own strength he estimated at twenty-two 
thousand men, enough for the purpose if he could take 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 427 

the Federals by surprise. But in some way Rose- 
crans became convinced that someone in Corinth was 
giving information to the enemy. 

Spies were set to watch the suspected persons, and 
before very long Rosecrans was in possession of a 
letter which a Miss Burton had tried to send to Van 
Dorn. Opening it, he discovered that it gave full in- 
formation as to the strength of the Union forces, and 
the number of their cannon. The writer further sug- 
gested that the Confederates should attack on the 
northwest side of the town, where the defences were 
weakest. With admirable shrewdness Rosecrans 
resealed the letter, sent it on to Van Dorn, and then 
went to work strengthening the earthworks on the 
northwest side of the town, keeping a vigilant watch 
upon Miss Burton meanwhile, to see that she found 
no means of warning Van Dorn against the trap that 
was being prepared for him. Before the cavalry scouts 
reported the enemy advancing in force, the ground 
which Miss Burton had called the weak spot in the 
Union line was well provided with revetted redoubts, 
rifle-pits, trenches, log breastworks, and other de- 
fensive erections. 

October 3 saw the Confederates moving against 
that side of the Federal works which they had been 
led to believe weak. The garrison of the outer de- 
fences had been instructed to make but a half-hearted 
resistance in order that the Confederates might the 
more quickly reach the trap that Rosecrans had set 
for them. But the madness of battle seized upon as- 
sailants and defenders alike and the fighting was very 
real until night stopped it. In his report Van Dorn 
grieved that night should have checked him on the 
verge of success, while Rosecrans also mourned that 
darkness should have halted the enemy on the edge of 
a fatal trap. 



428 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

At dawn the attack began again. At 9 :30 the Con- 
federates in dense masses moved against the spot they 
thought weak but which had been made invulnerable. 
From in front and on both sides batteries and regi- 
ments behind earthworks poured upon them a murder- 
ous fire. They fell by scores but the unhurt plodded 
on. An eye-witness described the scene in a phrase 
like a picture: "The enemy, seemingly insensible to 
fear or infuriated by passion, bent their necks down- 
ward and marched steadily to death, with their faces 
averted like men striving to protect themselves against 
a driving storm of hail." Against that storm it 
seemed no human pertinacity could prevail. Yet the 
Confederates surged forward in one of those grand, 
breathless, desperate charges for which the men of 
the South were famous. They -reached the crest of 
the hill. Another moment and they would plunge 
their bayonets into the bodies of Davies's men. But 
already the Union line was wavering. It crumbled 
away at the ends. Gaps appeared in it not made by 
wounds or death. The men were straggling to the 
rear. Rosecrans saw that the line was going. Gal- 
loping to the spot he strove to hold the men at their 
post. Over the roar of battle his voice could not 
be heard, but he waved his hat and pointed his sword 
at the enemy. But it was too late. All at once 
Davies's men gave way and fell back, carrying Rose- 
crans with them, shouting, gesticulating, imploring, 
but all helpless in the midst of the panic-stricken rab- 
ble. The Confederate brigades of Gates and Cabell, 
sorely cut up, swept on in pursuit. The redoubt of 
Fort Richardson, where the cannon were firing at 
point-blank range into the faces of the desperate men, 
checked them but a moment. Over the breastwork 
they swarmed. The gunners were shot down or 
pierced through and through with bayonet-thrusts. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 429 

Brave Richardson, who gave the fort its name, fell 
dead among his guns. Fifty yards down the hill 
toward Corinth were the artillery horses. A score of 
Confederates ran down to get them, but an Illinois 
regiment which had been in hiding suddenly rose and 
fired and the horses fell dead, and most of the men 
who had gone to capture them met the same fate. A 
number of the Confederates of Gates's command had 
penetrated as far as the outer streets of Corinth. 
They fought their way along from house to house, 
sheltering themselves behind trees and corners. At 
last they reached the house fronting on the public 
square which had been General Halleck's headquarters. 
They crowded into the house, on its piazza, and into 
its yard. General Rosecrans was on the other side 
of the square. He brought up a battery and opened 
fire. In a moment the house was riddled with bullets 
and full of dead and wounded men. 

But now the force of the Confederates' splendid 
charge was spent. The Tenth Ohio and Fifth Min- 
nesota regiments drove from the town such of the 
enemy as had come so far. The Fifty-first Illinois 
drove off the captors of Fort Richardson. Hamil- 
ton's veterans came up to aid in the work of wresting 
from the enemy the ground he had so magnificently 
won. A concentric fire from a ring of Union batteries 
was poured into the bleeding ranks of Gates and 
Cabell. Suddenly they retreated. It was a bitter 
disappointment to so soon lose the fruits of their 
daring charge. But the fortune of war is inexorable, 
and soon the ground before Fort Richardson was held 
only by the Confederate dead and wounded. There 
was no more fighting there that day. 

After the battle was over General Rosecrans rode 
out on the field before the Union right. A wounded 
lieutenant of an Arkansas regiment attracted his 



430 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

attention. The general offered the sufferer some 
water. 

" Thank you, general," was the response, *' one of 
your men has just given me some." 

" It was pretty hot fighting here," remarked Rose- 
crans as he looked about the field, over which the dead 
and wounded were plentifully strewn. 

" Yes, general," said the Arkansan philosophically, 
" you licked us good, but we gave you the best we had 
in the ranch." 

On the Union centre the Confederates pressed with 
no less gallantry and were opposed with equal dog- 
gedness. Once their line wavered within a few yards 
of the ditch of Battery Robinett. A mounted officer 
leaped from his horse, seized the colors from the fal- 
tering grasp of the wounded color-bearer and scaled 
the rampart. As he turned to cheer on his men a 
14-year-old drummer boy rose before him, leveled a 
pistol, and fired. The brave leader of a forlorn hope 
fell dead and his followers, suddenly smitten by a 
volley from the whole line, melted away. A second 
charge carried the Confederates into Battery Robinett 
and they cheered wildly as they saw its blue-clad de- 
fenders run out. But their joy was brief. The guns 
of Fort Williams covered the whole interior of 
Robinett and the defenders of the latter had 
been directed to retire and let the Confederates enter. 
Once they had filled the fort the guns of Fort 
Williams opened on the packed and helpless mass 
and did frightful execution. There was nothing 
to do but flee from the slaughter-house so hardly won. 

This disaster convinced the reluctant Van Dorn 
that the day was lost. The information he had re- 
ceived from the traitress within the Union lines had 
but lured him on to his own undoing. In three hours 
he had lost three thousand men, and though the Union 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 431 

forces had suffered sorely likewise they were still in 
possession of their impregnable works. Not merely 
an abandonment of the assault, but a retreat to Holly 
Springs was ordered. Rosecrans pursued but only 
ineffectually. His army had suffered too greatly to 
take the field with fresh alacrity. In the battle the 
Union loss according to Rosecrans was 315 killed, 
1,812 wounded, and 232 missing; total 2,359. -^^ to 
the Confederate loss a contradiction in reports leads 
to doubt. Van Dorn reported 505 killed, 2,150 
wounded, and 2,183 missing. But Rosecrans de- 
clared that he took 2,268 prisoners, and his medical 
director states that 1,423 Confederates were buried 
by Union soldiers on the field of battle. It is safe to 
assume that the figures of Van Dorn were too small. 
For his successful defence at Corinth Rosecrans 
was made a major-general and appointed to the com- 
mand of the Army of the Cumberland from which 
Buell was removed. Van Dorn unluckily, and un- 
justly, incurred the displeasure of Jefferson Davis and 
was deprived of his command. Curiously enough, 
after surviving many savage battles he was killed in a 
duel. 

On taking command of the Army of the Cumber- 
land the first action of Rosecrans was to concentrate 
it at Nashville. While this work was in progress he 
was overwhelmed with insistence by the War Depart- 
ment that he should find Bragg and destroy his army. 
He prudently, however, refused to move until he had 
gathered sufficient rations to maintain his army for 
some time independently of the railroad from Nash- 
ville to Louisville, for this line of communication was 
of the frailest and had already been cut several times 
by the dashing Confederate cavalry under Morgan 
and Forrest. Bragg had established his army at Mur- 



432 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

freesboro, and not expecting an early attack the offi- 
cers and soldiers were enjoying something of a bril- 
liant social season. John Morgan, the famous rough- 
rider and guerrilla chieftain chose that time to be 
married. Leonidas Polk, discarding for the time the 
uniform of a Confederate major-general, assumed once 
more the robe and white lawn sleeves of his Episcopal 
bishopric and performed the ceremony. President 
Jefferson Davis was present and congratulated the 
wedding pair. But though 

"There was a sound of revelry by night 
And all went merry as a wedding bell," 

grim-visaged war was still round about and in a day 
or two the bridegroom was again in the saddle, lead- 
ing his raiders into Kentucky and breaking Rosecrans's 
railroad connections. He did it well that time — 
breaking down the roof of a tunnel, filling it with 
freight cars and setting the train on fire. It took the 
Federals months to undo that day's work. 

On the 26th of December word reached Bragg that 
Rosecrans's army was moving out of Nashville to at- 
tack him, and he went out to meet his enemy. About 
two miles from Murfreesboro flows a little creek 
called Stone's River and beyond it the Confederates 
dug their trenches and waited. They had not long to 
wait. On the 29th the Federals pushed up to the 
range of their cannon, but halted without an attack. 
That night the Confederate cavalry made one of its 
characteristic raids around the Union rear. How 
successful the raiders were may be judged from the fact 
that a Union staff officer estimates the damage to the 
Federal army at " seven hundred prisoners and nearly 
a million dollars' worth of property " ; and declares 
that at the scene of devastation " the turnpike as far 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 433 

as the eye could reach was filled with burning wagons. 
The country was overspread with disarmed men, 
broken-down horses and mules," and that the raiders 
carried back, to camp " a sufficient number of Minie 
rifles and accoutrements to arm a brigade." 

Rosecrans was surprised to find the Confederates 
in front of the creek, not behind it. The latter would 
have been the better line of defence, but defence was 
not the first thought in Bragg's mind. Though he 
had but thirty-eight thousand men to Rosecrans's 
forty-seven thousand his naturally aggressive tempera- 
ment impelled him to attack. Curiously enough both 
commanders the night before the battle fixed upon the 
same plan of battle. Each determined to attack his 
enemy's right wing. As a result each strengthened 
his own wing which was to attack, and, not knowing 
his adversary's plan, weakened that part of his own 
army which had to sustain the attack. As a natural 
result the one who struck first had the advantage and 
Bragg struck first. Had the two attacks been made 
simultaneously the singular spectacle would have been 
presented of two great armies revolving on a fixed 
pivot. 

At dawn Hardee's men with full cartridge boxes, 
belts tightened, spirits keyed up to battle fell upon 
the men of Johnson's and Davis's brigades, busy over 
bacon and coffee. The surprise was almost complete; 
resistance unavailing. In three-quarters of an hour 
the assailants were masters of that part of the field, 
captured three cannon and inflicted heavy losses on 
their foes. A second Union line of seven thousand men, 
formed to hold the Confederates in check, was swept 
away. All the time Rosecrans, far away, had been 
pressing his attack against the Confederate right which 
still held the Union forces in check though rapidly 
growing weaker. Though he heard the cannon at 



434 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the other end of the battle field the Union commander 
was late in learning how serious was the situation 
there. When he did learn he galloped over, passing 
Sheridan's division in full retreat, and all the riff-raff 
of a defeated army. 

It was indeed time for his presence. So long had he 
been seeking to offset the Union reverses on the right 
by striking a fierce and final blow with his left, that the 
reverses became well-nigh irreparable. The stoutest- 
hearted among his division commanders thought that 
the battle was lost. But, heedless of danger, never 
once admitting the possibility of defeat, the old soldier 
plunged into the fray. The manner in which he 
snatched victory from the very jaws of defeat must 
ever challenge the admiration of military critics. He 
formed a new line. With a soldier's practised eye he 
chose every point of vantage. His regulars were 
where the fighting was sure to be the fiercest. His 
batteries were on the crest of every hill. Every clump 
of cedars that offered the slightest concealment, shel- 
tered a line of Federal infantry. 

Fearing nothing for himself, Rosecrans showed 
little pity for his associates, to whom the fortunes of 
war would bring death or wounds. Someone told 
him that Sill was dead. 

" Never mind," he responded, " brave men must 
fall In battle." 

He rode up to a brigade and was holding an ex- 
posed position. The men were going fast. The spat 
of the round-shot, the thud of the bullet, the sharp 
cry of the wounded told how great was the peril in 
which every man there stood. 

" Stand firm, boys," said the general, as he shared 
their danger, " cross yourselves and fire low." 

A Catholic by faith, as his words showed, the 
religious code which Rosecrans observed on the battle 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 435 

field was not unlike that of the Puritans, who " put 
their trust in Providence and kept their powder dry." 

The new line was formed by this time, and stretched 
at right angles to the first one. Sheridan was there, 
and showed on that bloody field the bulldog qualities 
which put him in the front rank of American soldiers; 
Thomas, cool and inflexible, held his men rigidly to 
their task; Hazen with his brigade of Ohio boys; 
Shepherd with his brigade of regulars, whose profes- 
sional pride would never let them leave a field while 
a volunteer dared stay; Rousseau, with his brigade 
tried in the fiery furnace of Corinth — all these were 
there shoulder to shoulder, and at intervals along the 
line the guns of Loomis, Guenther, and Stokes were 
at work filling the air with smoke made lurid by the 
powder's flash. 

The enemy's guns were not idle, though, and many 
a gap was made in the long blue line as some roaring 
round-shot or hurtling charge of canister went through. 
Rosecrans, who was riding everywhere, had more than 
one narrow escape. A shot struck the haunches of a 
horse directly in line with him. The rider was thrown 
twenty feet, but the shot was deflected from its course 
and Rosecrans was unhurt. A little later a round-shot 
took off the head of his friend and aide Garesche, 
who rode close at his side. Someone, seeing the blood 
which plentifully bespattered the general's uniform, 
asked if he was wounded. 

" No, it's Garesche's blood, poor fellow. But no 
matter. Death may come to any in battle." 

It were idle to tell of the gallant but fruitless efforts 
that the Confederates made to break down this line 
of iron hearts; how with their batteries blazing in the 
rear they pressed forward with all the fiery dash of 
men of Southern blood; how they met the storm of 
Iron that dashed against them and were mowed down 



436 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

by it, — undaunted, but unable to make headway 
against the deadly blast; how the battle standards went 
forward, wavering now and then when some volun- 
teer standard-bearer snatched the staff from the falter- 
ing grasp of one falling before the enemy's stroke, 
and then drifted back again; and how, withal, the 
plucky assailants gained not one inch of ground, nor 
moved the Union line one jot. Elated and certain 
of victory at first, the Confederates became irritated 
at this unexpected check, then doubtful of success, then 
despairing. When the sun went down it left the 
Union army still holding its position, and a feeling 
was abroad in the ranks of the foe that from that 
position it was not to be driven. At noon Rosecrans 
was being beaten everywhere; the Confederates were 
driving his choicest divisions before them like sheep; 
he had lost half his field of battle and seemed fated 
to lose the remainder. But by sundown he had formed 
a line which had withstood the rudest shocks of battle, 
and though the general results of the day's fighting 
had been against him he held the field and made ready 
for an attack on the morrow. 

Bragg was a disappointed man when the sun rose 
on New Year's Day, 1863, and showed the Federals 
still before him. He had telegraphed to Richmond, 
" God has granted us a Happy New Year " — 
" Happy " with thousands of dead and wounded on 
the icy ground ! — and he undoubtedly believed that 
Rosecrans would retreat. Indeed the Federals them- 
selves expected the order to retire and were frankly 
amazed when Rosecrans issued orders to re-form the 
lines and fight it out there. " It is all right, boys," 
said he to a group who looked at him curiously. 
" Bragg is a good dog, but " Holdfast is a better." 

January 2, Bragg, against the advice of his division 
commanders, resumed the attack. The fighting did 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 437 

not begin until four o'clock, lasted but an hour, and 
ended in Confederate defeat. Breckinridge was or- 
dered to carry a hill occupied by Union forces. The 
hill was carried, but the Union artillery concentrated 
its fire on the assailants and inflicted on them heavy 
loss. Thereupon the Federal infantry rallied and 
drove the Confederates from the position they had 
taken. Breckinridge lost nearly 1,500 men in the 
attack. That night the Confederates retired from the 
field and from Murfreesboro. 

The loss had been heavy on both sides. The fight- 
ing was fierce and the number killed or wounded un- 
usually great. Bragg had lost 11,439; of these 9,000 
were wounded or slain. Rosecrans had 1,553 rnen 
killed, 7,245 wounded, and 2,800 made prisoners. 
Moreover, the Federals lost 28 pieces of artillery and 
a great amount of their baggage train. But they held 
the field, and though in the chief day of the battle 
Bragg carried almost everything before him, yet Hold- 
fast proved to be the better dog, and the Confederates 
by retreating confessed that to them the battle of Mur- 
freesboro, or Stone's River, was really a serious re- 
verse. 



CHAPTER XX 

McClellan Relieved of Command, Burnside Succeeds Him — The 
Battle of Fredericksburg — Slaughter on Marye's Heights — 
Burnside Deposed and Hooker Appointed — The Battles of 
Chancellorsville and the Wilderness. 

Fully two months passed after Lee had recrossed 
the Potomac into Virginia before McClellan was in 
a position to strike him again. Then, when the Union 
commander had made all his preparations to deliver 
the stroke he was abruptly relieved of his command 
and superseded by Burnside. It is said that General 
Burnside was exceedingly doubtful of his own quali- 
fications for the post to which he was so precipitately 
appointed. If so the modest doubt was creditable 
to him as a man, and events proved it to be justifiable. 
McClellan's removal was partly dictated by political 
considerations, partly by the reluctant conviction on 
the part of President Lincoln that he was too cautious. 
His soldiers as a body adored him and it may be 
noted that his immediate successors in command of 
the Army of the Potomac were less successful than he 
though he had turned over to them a machine which 
it had taken him two years to perfect. As for the 
Confederate view of him it was expressed by General 
Lee who said that he regretted parting with McClel- 
lan, " because we understood each other so well. I 
fear they may continue to make these changes until 
they find someone whom I don't understand." 

When General Burnside entered McClellan's tent 
at Salem, Va., with the order for the latter's deposi- 
tion the Army of the Potomac was concentrated in 

438 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 439 

force near that point and between the two wings of 
Lee's army. These wings were about forty miles 
apart. McClellan was within twenty miles of Long- 
street and was about to strike at him when the Presi- 
dent's order stopped all that. Burnside, on taking 
command, proposed to Washington a campaign against 
Richmond by way of Fredericksburg which after some 
delay and doubt on the President's part was approved. 
He also reorganized the Army of the Potomac into 
three Grand Divisions and a Reserve Corps. The 
commanders, whose names it will be well to keep in 
mind were: Right Grand Division, General Sumner; 
Centre, General Hooker; Left, General FVanklin, and 
Reserve Corps, General Sigel. Sumner's division 
reached Falmouth, across the river from Fredericks- 
burg, on the 17th of November, the others following 
in a day or two. 

Falmouth was but a few miles from Acquia Creek, 
a steamboat landing on the navigable portion of the 
Rappahannock which Burnside designed to make his 
base of supplies. Lee foresaw some such move and 
sent Stuart to tear up the railway connecting the two 
places. At the same time he established a small garri- 
son at Fredericksburg. He did not at first incline to 
making Fredericksburg his line of defence, and had 
Sumner crossed the river and occupied the town and 
the heights beyond he would have saved the Union 
cause one of the bloodiest reverses of the whole war. 
But Burnside would not permit this, for the river 
though fordable at the moment was subject to sudden 
rises, there were no bridges standing and the pontoons 
for military bridges were not at hand. Burnside 
feared that if Sumner should cross a heavy November 
rain might swell the Rappahannock, leaving him a prey 
to any force Lee might send down upon him. 

The pontoons were delayed for nearly two months 



440 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

— not at all through any fault on Burnside's part — and 
while that general sat chafing in his tent on the Fal- 
mouth side of the river Lee concluded to give him 
battle there, and accordingly occupied the heights back 
of the town. Fredericksburg itself lies on level 
ground, somewhat elevated above the river, but back 
of it the ground rises abruptly to a ridge called Marye's 
Heights, at the foot of which was then a wide, deep 
ditch. Several brooks and one small creek cross this 
ground. At the base of Marye's Hill was a sunken 
road with stone retaining walls upholding the soil on 
either side to just about breast high on a man. From 
before this sunken road the ground sloped gently almost 
to the ditch when it dropped abruptly three or four feet 
leaving a sort of shelf of level ground by the ditch- 
side. It was before this sunken road that the most 
desperate fighting of the battle occurred. Lee made 
no attempt to occupy the town of Fredericksburg in 
force, for it lay under the Federals' guns and could 
not be held. A few battalions of skirmishers and 
sharpshooters only were posted there. Even when 
Burnside's pontoons arrived and bridge building began, 
on the loth of December, no really serious effort was 
made to prevent the Federals from crossing. The 
sharpshooters posted in buildings along the river's 
bank, behind trees and stone-walls, did indeed keep 
up a lively and a particularly deadly fire, but the Con- 
federate cannon on the heights beyond, in easy range 
of the bridge-buiders, were silent. Enraged by the 
waspish activity of the sharpshooters Burnside ordered 
the town bombarded, and as it was almost at point- 
blank range and 150 guns were engaged the little hud- 
dled-up cluster of old brick buildings was soon a pile 
of smoking ruins. But there were enough walls left 
to shelter the sharpshooters and when the bridge- 
builders took up their work again the bullets again 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 441 

began to whistle and men dropped from the pontoons 
faster than they could be replaced. 

It looked as if a paltry band of skilled marksmen 
were to stand off the Army of the Potomac in- 
definitely, and Burnside ordered the Seventh Michigan 
Volunteers to cross in boats and dislodge the enemy. 

Into one of the boats with the rest of the Michigan 
men climbed drummer boy Robert Hendershot. He 
was not a very old soldier — twelve years old that very 
first day of the battle of Fredericksburg — but where 
his regiment went, there he proposed to go, too. And so 
he clambered into the boat in the most matter-of-fact 
way with his drum strapped to his back. His captain 
caught sight of him. 

" Get out of this," he ordered him gruffly. " You're 
too small for this sort of business." 

"May I help push off the boat, captain?" asked 
the boy, as if eager to do something. 

" Yes." 

So Robert clambered out again and with others gave 
the boat a push which sent it out into the channel. 
But he clung to the gunwale, and so, floating in the icy 
water, was dragged across the stream. As he came 
out of the water on the other side a bit of shell tore 
his drum from his shoulder. Then he seized a dead 
soldier's musket and took his place with his regiment. 

The steep bank of the river protected the storm- 
ing party from the bullets of the riflemen, and in its 
shelter they huddled until the boats came over again 
with reenforcements. Then, with a cheer, they rushed 
up the hill, regardless of flying lead, and drove the 
sharpshooters from their lurking-places. Some of the 
Mississippians were captured in the cellars where they 
had taken refuge, but most of them fought in the streets, 
dropping back from house to house and making a fierce 
resistance. At length the town was cleared of the last 



442 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of them, and the work of building the bridges went 
on without molestation. 

So all that day and night and much of the next day 
the blue-coated regiments were marching across the 
floating bridges. Franklin's grand division crossed by 
the lower bridges, Hooker and Sumner by those op- 
posite the town. All around the town on a command- 
ing range of hills were Lee's batteries, yet not a shot 
was fired into the town crowded with fifty thousand 
soldiers. All the Union officers expected a bombard- 
ment, and many guesses were hazarded to explain the 
silence of the enemy's guns. " I'll tell you why Lee 
didn't keep us out," said one grizzled color-sergeant. 
** He wanted us here. We've got a river behind us 
and all the best batteries in the rebel army in front 
of us, and the Johnnies know they can gobble us up 
whenever they get ready." 

Major Matthew Steele Forney, the official lecturer 
at the Army Service Schools, says of the battle of 
Fredericksburg: " The attack was in fact made with- 
out any real plan. It resolved itself into fourteen des- 
perate, unsupported, unsuccessful assaults at one im- 
pregnable point of the line, and another at a different 
point five miles away; while there was practically no 
fighting along a great part of the line and large num- 
bers of the troops scarcely fired a shot." 

The point which sustained Burnside's fourteen des- 
perate assaults was Marye's Hill, standing back about 
half a mile from the outskirts of the city. On its crest 
stands the pillared mansion of Mr. Marye, and from 
this the hill derived its name. Marye's Hill will live 
in military annals for many a year yet to come. For 
half a mile from the city extended a rolling plateau, 
commanded at every point by the guns which frowned 
from Marye's Hill and the adjacent heights. Just 
where the hill begins to rise from the plateau, is a road 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 443 

skirting its base. The road is sunken somewhat be- 
neath the level of the plateau and separated from it 
by a stone-wall faced on the outer side with banked-up 
dirt. No one walking across the fields would suspect 
that either wall or road is there. 

Now Marye's Hill being neither very steep nor very 
densely wooded, Lee suspected that it was against it 
that the enemy would turn their attack. McLaws's 
division — tried veterans of a hundred battle fields — 
were to hold the hill for the Confederates. To aid 
them some of the strongest batteries of the Army of 
Virginia were posted in commanding positions. Riding 
about the heights, General Longstreet noticed an idle 
gun. 

" Post that where it will bear on the plateau," he 
ordered. 

" Why, general," responded his superintendent of 
artillery. " We cover that ground now so well that 
we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken 
could not live in that field when we open on it." 

The gun was put in place, and when the time came 
the truth of the artilleryman's confident assertion was 
amply proved. 

December 13th dawned frosty and foggy. From 
their trenches on the crest of the hills the Confederates 
could see nothing but a sea of shifting, gray, impene- 
trable fog, covering Fredericksburg like a pall and 
cutting off all vision. But up out of the fog came 
martial sounds, that told clearly enough to a soldier's 
ears that a battle was coming. The blare of the bugle, 
the roll of the drum, the occasional rumble of a bat- 
tery — not much of that, though, for most of the Union 
batteries were on the heights beyond the river — and 
the shouts of the soldiers as their officers exhorted 
them to deeds of bravery, all floated upward through 
the fog, carrying their story to the listeners on the 



444 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

heights. "We're in for it to-day, sure enough," 
thought the ragged Confederates, and those of them 
who were on Marye's Hill thanked their stars thev 
were not the fellows who had to charge across that 
ratal plain lying there below. 

By ten o'clock the sun came out brightly. Its rays 
were too much for the fog, and the gray curtain slowly 
faded away, leaving the martial pageant on the plains 
below spread out, clear to the vision of the Confeder- 
ates. Lee and Longstreet were on horseback on a hill 
that commanded a view of the whole scene. After the 
first glance they looked meaningly at each other. Before 
Marye s Hill not a Union soldier was to be seen, 
while two miles farther south, arrayed against the hill 
which Stonewall Jackson held, were the teeming regi- 
ments of Franklin's grand division, and two divisions 
from Hooker. Could it be, after all, that Burnside's 
assault was to be delivered against Jackson? Was all 
that massing of batteries about Marye's Hill a useless 
precaution? But after a momentary consultation the 
two generals decided that Franklin's demonstration 
against their right was merely to cloak Burnside's 
true purpose. Then they gave themselves up to 
watching the great military spectacle spread out before 
them. 

Franklin's well-clad regiments were indeed a bril- 
hant spectacle. The bright December sun danced 
gaily on twenty thousand gleaming bayonets and mus- 
ket-barrels. The flags floated in the breeze, the red 
stripes of " Old Glory," and the countless colors of 
state flags, regimental banners and guidons made 
bright patches of color against the blue background 
of the solidly massed troops. Mounted aides were 
galloping everywhere, and now and then some general 
officer with a gaily caparisoned staff galloped along the 
front of a brigade, and the cheers that greeted him 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 445 

were borne aloft on the breeze. Now the troops were 
moving. Soon, after much marching and counter- 
marching, two long lines of blue appear and moved 
forward toward the wooded slopes which sheltered 
Stonewall Jackson and his tattered regiments of battle- 
scarred veterans. And then the Union batteries far 
away across the Rappahannock suddenly sprang into 
full cry, and clouds of smoke arose over there, and 
from the woods where their shells were bursting. The 
battle was begun, but as yet Jackson made no sign. 
But when the first line reached the edge of the woods 
there was a crash of musketry, and Stuart's cannon 
began to roar. Then Lee knew that his most trusty 
lieutenant was hard at work, and the ragged Confed- 
erates whom the battle had not yet reached wondered 
audibly " what old Stonewall was going to do with 
them fellers." 

Let us go over to the right and see how the battle 
was going there. Sixteen thousand men were in the 
assaulting columns of the Federals. Of these a bri- 
gade of Pennsylvanians under Meade carried off the 
honors of the day. Disregarding alike the rapid and 
deadly fire of the Confederate infantry and the furious 
hail of grape-shot from the hostile batteries which 
beat against their faces, these brave men plunged into 
the woods, and pushed doggedly on. Their field ar- 
tillery did good work in supporting their advance. As 
the first projectile came crashing in among the Con- 
federate gunners, a boy who was helping serve one of 
the guns cried out in horror to General Stuart, who 
stood near, " General, their very first shot has killed 
two men." 

Jackson rode along his lines encouraging his men to 
stand firm against the coming assault. Some of the 
soldiers who had marched with him through the Shen- 
andoah Valley and fought with him on the fields of 



446 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Manassas and Antietam scarcely knew him to-day. 
A few days before Fredericksburg, General Stuart 
bought him a new coat and cap of Confederate gray, 
plentifully garnished with gold lace. To-day General 
Jackson was resplendent in his new finery. The dingy 
surtout of gray and the battered cap were gone. The 
general had togged himself out for battle as daintily 
as though he were going to a ball. So unusual was 
the brilliancy of his dress that one of his tattered vet- 
erans was heard to say to a comrade, who pointed out 
this nicely dressed officer as General Jackson, " What! 
that finely dressed fellow Old Jack! No, sir. You 
can't fool me that way." 

Jackson soon found plenty of work along his lines. 
A gap had been left between the brigades of Archer 
and Lane, and into this the Federals pressed with irre- 
sistible power. The line thus pierced began to give 
way. General Gregg, trying to rally his troops, was 
mortally wounded. For a time things looked desper- 
ate for the Confederates thereabouts, but Jackson 
coming up soon changed the situation. Without try- 
ing to rally his first line, he brought his second line 
into action. It was Early's brigade which now came 
plunging through the underbrush on the double-quick 
to the scene of impending disaster. The veterans 
were inclined to make sport of the men of Archer's 
brigade when they passed on their way to the front. 
"Here comes old Jubal!" they cried. "Let old 
Jubal straighten that fence! Jubal's boys are always 
getting Hill out o' trouble.' 

This time certainly Jubal Early's men did succeed in 
redeeming the day for the Confederates. They fell 
fiercely upon Meade's men, who, exhausted with long 
and gallant fighting, and exposed to a murderous fire 
from the Confederate batteries, began to give way. 

About the middle of the forenoon, when the noise 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 447 

of the conflict on the Confederate right seemed to indi- 
cate that Jackson was being rather roughly handled, 
the Confederate gunners on Marye's Hill opened fire 
on Fredericksburg. The effect was like pitching 
stones at a wasps' nest. The shells had hardly begun 
to fall in the town when a column of troops appeared, 
marching out of the streets, and deploying on the plain 
before the Confederate guns. The skirmishers scat- 
tered out to the right and left and marched steadily 
forward, driving the Confederate pickets before them. 
The line of battle followed hard behind, French's 
division leading, Hancock's division in support, formed 
in two parallel lines. Grandly the great array, bris- 
tling with bayonets and gay with flags and banners, 
swung out under the fire of the enemy's guns and 
pressed forward with quick strides. The Confederate 
gunners turned away from the town now. They had 
a more thrilling target than piles of brick and mortar. 
And so from all the semicircle of hills the cannon 
roared, and the hissing shot cut cruel lanes in the ranks 
of the advancing host. From Marye's Hill the 
famous Washington Artillery of New Orleans was 
pounding away. But though they were in the very 
hottest part of the field which Longstreet's chief of 
artillery declared he could rake as with a fine-tooth 
comb, yet it seemed for a time that the gallant blue- 
coats were going to gain the slope of the hill after all. 
Faster and faster worked the gunners on the heights, 
wider and more often did the gaps open in the Union 
line. But still the advance was unchecked until sud- 
denly a line of men in gray seemed to rise up out of 
the ground right in their faces. There was a crash of 
musketry, and the first line of the advance was gone. 
The bewildered blue-coats hesitated a moment. There 
came another volley, so close upon the first that the 
echoes had scarce time to die away, and the smoke still 



448 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

hid their unlooked-for assailants. Before this scorch- 
ing blast of lead and flame the Federals were swept 
away. When the smoke of the two volleys cleared 
away their lines were seen to have gone to pieces, and 
the field was covered with men, each seeking to save 
himself. Many took refuge in a railway cut which 
sheltered them from the batteries on Marye's Hill, 
but some Confederate artillerymen on Lee's hill saw 
this, and turned their guns on the cowering crowding 
mass of routed men. The shot and shell tore through 
the cut from end to end, spreading death in their path. 
Rushing from the cut the men sought shelter elsewhere 
and soon found it behind a slight slope in the field 
which protected them from their enemies. 

What was it that brought this sudden disaster upon 
the gallant men of French's and Hancock's. divisions? 
The reader will remember the half-sunken road, 
flanked with an earth-covered stone-wall, which was 
described as skirting the bottom of Marye's Hill. 
Here Longstreet had stationed 2,500 men of Cobb's 
division. Stooping or sitting down they were wholly 
hidden by the wall. Rising, they exposed only their 
heads, and the wall came to the exact height to serve 
for a rest for their muskets. The road was broad 
and level, and the men were formed in four lines, the 
first being instructed to fall back as soon as they had 
delivered their volley and let the second line take their 
place. It was thus that the two volleys had so quickly 
succeeded each other and put the Federals to rout. 
Later in the day we find that even the changing of the 
lines was too slow for the fiery spirits behind the wall, 
and that the men in front kept those behind busy in 
loading muskets and passing them forward. 

Strong though Cobb's position was, Longstreet had 
some doubts of his ability to hold It, and sent directions 
to other commanders for their guidance if Cobb fell 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 449 

back. " If they wait for me to fall back," said that 
soldier grimly, on hearing of this, " they'll wait a long 
time." And so it proved, for his line was the rock 
on which one after the other the surging lines of 
charging Federals broke and were dashed back in 
fragments. 

But now another river of men came rushing down 
Hanover Street leading out of Fredericksburg, and 
crossing the canal by two bridges, spread out like a fan 
over the plateau. Hancock and French rallied their 
men and joined in the second assault. General Couch, 
some of whose troops were with Hancock, went with 
General Howard to the top of a church steeple to over- 
look the field. It was the story of the first charge 
repeated. The Confederate artillery mowed the gal- 
lant fellows down by scores, and when the survivors 
got within point-blank range of the stone-wall, up rose 
Cobb's men and shot them down by hundreds. " Oh, 
great God!" cried Howard from his lofty observa- 
tory, " see how our men, our poor fellows are falling." 

General Couch thus describes the scene he saw from 
the steeple: "I remember that the whole plain was 
covered with men, prostrate and dropping, the live 
men running here and there, and In front closing upon 
each other, and the wounded coming back. The com- 
mands seemed to be mixed up. I had never before 
seen fighting like that; nothing approaching It In ter- 
rible uproar and destruction. There was no cheering 
on the part of the men, but a stubborn determination 
to obey orders and do their duty. I don't think there 
was much feeling of success. As they charged, the 
artillery fire would break their formation and they 
would get mixed; then they would close up, go for- 
ward, receive the withering Infantry fire, and those 
who were able would run to the houses and fight as 
best they could; and then the next brigade coming up 



450 STORYOFOURARMY 

in succession would do its duty and melt like snow 
coming down upon the warm ground." 

The second charge met with no more success than 
the first. As before, the Union lines were fairly cut 
to pieces before the impregnable stone-wall. Most 
of the survivors drifted away to the rear, while some 
found refuge in a stout brick house that stood a little 
to the right of the Confederate position. From the 
windows of this house the Union sharpshooters drew 
a bead on the men in the sunken road, and from this 
flanking fire alone did the defenders of the stone-wall 
suffer during that battle. The brick house served as 
a refuge for hundreds of Union soldiers who shrank 
from the frightful carnage of the plateau. General 
Couch himself rode over there. " I found the brick 
house packed with men," he wrote long afterwards, 
" and behind it the dead and the living were thick 
as they could be packed together. The dead were 
rolled out for shelter and the dead horses were used 
for breastworks. I know I tried to shelter myself 
behind the brick house, but found I could not because 
of the men already there." 

By this time the Federals, officers and men alike, 
began to think that the Confederates could not be 
driven from their stronghold. " Well, Couch," said 
General Hooker, who was in command on the field, 
" things are in such a state I must go and tell Burnside 
it is no use trying to carry this position." And off he 
galloped. While he was gone word came to General 
Couch that the enemy was retreating. He sent for 
General Humphreys, and said, " General Hancock 
reports that the enemy is falling back; now is the time 
for you to go in! " Humphreys " goes in " with two 
brigades. The enemy was not falling back, and the 
stone-wall was as impregnable as ever. 

Meanwhile the Confederate officers gazed from their 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 451 

elevated station upon the carnage below, wondering 
mightily that men will thus repeatedly rush upon death. 
They knew the strength of their own position, and 
they marveled that Burnside should have sent his best 
brigades one after another into this trap of fire and 
iron. Lee, looking down upon the scene, turned to 
an officer standing by him and said: " It Is well that 
war Is so terrible! We should grow too fond of It." 

Now Hooker came back to the field. He reported 
having found Burnside deaf to all suggestions of pru- 
dence. " That crest must be carried to-night," he 
had said repeatedly while walking nervously up and 
down. Hooker bowed to the will of his superior 
officer, and returned to hurl yet another torrent of 
men against the stone-wall. It was almost dark when 
this last charge was ordered. " Take off your knap- 
sacks," was the word. " Don't load your guns. 
There will be no time for loading and firing. Give 
them the cold steel." Thus stripped for action the men 
rushed forward with cheers. Four thousand were In 
the assault. But again the Confederate artillery 
roared and the musketry rattled and the line crumbled 
away and was lost In the gathering darkness. Night 
came on rapidly, and when under cover of Its sable 
mantle the Confederates ventured out before their 
stronghold, they found that the nearest dead body 
clad in blue lay thirty paces from the wall. There 
was the dead-line which none might pass. 

Throughout a bitter cold night the Union wounded 
lay on the ground between the two hostile lines. Back 
in his camp beyond the Rappahannock, Burnside paced 
nervously back and forth before his tent. Division 
commanders came to consult him about the morrow, 
but could get no orders. He talked of renewing the 
assault, of putting himself at the head of seventeen 
fresh regiments and leading them to victory or death. 



452 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

In the midst of discussion of this plan he would break 
off, and pointing to the battle field cry out, " Oh, those 
men, those men over there! I am thinking of them all 
the time." It was a bloody battle field indeed that 
weighed so heavily on his mind. 

In the effort to take the heights Burnside had sacri- 
ficed 12,653 men, of whom 1,284 were killed and 9,600 
wounded. Over two-thirds of these fell before the 
fatal stone-wall. Hancock's division, which bore the 
brunt of the conflict there, lost 2,013 out of a total 
strength of 5,006. In eight of his regiments over 
half the officers and men were killed. 

The Confederates on their part lost 5,377 men, of 
whom 608 were killed and 4,116 wounded. Their 
heaviest loss was on their right, where Meade charged 
through Stonewall Jackson's line. But the gallant 
charges against the stone-wall, which cost the Union 
soldiers so much blood, were repelled by the Confeder- 
ates with a loss of but 1,555 men. 

For two days after the battle there was light skir- 
mishing between the two armies, then Burnside with- 
drew his troops to the farther side of the Rappahan- 
nock. There it remained, practically without action, 
for three months. Burnside once tried to reach Lee 
by a flanking movement but a torrential rain so swelled 
the Chickahominy that its passage was impossible. 
The effort to bring up enough pontoons to bridge the 
rushing stream attracted the attention of the Confed- 
erates and the movement, which had been intended for 
a surprise, became known in all its details to the Con- 
federate commander. The latter's pickets added to 
the chagrin of the Union soldiers struggling in the 
unfathomable mud by shouting across the stream: 

"Stick to it, Yanks! Just wait till the rain stops 
and we will come over and help you build your 
bridges." 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 453 

This '* mud march," as it was called, this abortive 
attempt to retrieve the disaster of Fredericksburg, 
brought down upon Burnside a storm of ridicule and 
abuse. He had already been sorely tried by his de- 
feat and it is fair to conclude that his judgment had 
been somewhat impaired by his troubles, for he went 
to Washington with the extraordinary demand that 
Hooker and three other general officers should be 
dismissed from the army, or that his own resignation 
should be accepted. President Lincoln accepted the lat- 
ter alternative, and appointed General Joseph T. 
Hooker to command the Army of the Potomac in his 
stead. 

Hooker was popular with the rank and file; less 
so with officers nearly his equal in rank. He had 
dash and courage and bore the nickname of *' Fighting 
Joe " — always a perilous sort of a sobriquet for a 
general officer to bear lest it lead him to forget there 
are other duties beside fighting. He showed himself 
a good organizer at the outset by promptly reporting 
that there were 2,922 officers and 81,694 enlisted men 
absent from their colors, and established a new system 
of furloughs which held the soldiers to their place of 
duty. He must have been subject to indiscretion of 
tongue for Abraham Lincoln addressed to him the 
following remarkable letter, which he seemingly had 
discretion of mind enough to take to heart and not re- 
sent. 

" I have placed you at the head of the Army of the 
Potomac," wrote the President. " Of course, I have 
done this upon what appear to me sufficient reasons, 
and yet I think it best for you to know there are some 
things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with 
you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, 
which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix 
politics with your profession, in which you are right. 



454 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, 
if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, 
which within reasonable bounds does good rather than 
harm; but I think that during General Burnside's 
command of the army you have taken counsel of your 
ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in 
which you did a great wrong to the country and to 
a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I 
have heard in such a way as to believe it, of your re- 
cently saying that both the army and the government 
needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this but 
in spite of it that I have given you the command. Only 
these generals who gain successes can set up dictators. 
What I now ask of you is military success, and I will 
risk the dictatorship. The government will support 
you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more 
nor less than it has done and will do for all com- 
manders. I much fear that the spirit which you have 
aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their com- 
mander and withholding confidence from him, will 
now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can 
to put it down. Neither you, nor Napoleon were he 
alive again, could get any good out of an army while 
such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rash- 
ness ! Beware of rashness. But with energy and 
sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories." 
While reorganizing his army Hooker was busily 
considering plans for the next attack, for it was no 
part of his programme to permit Lee to spend the win- 
ter snugly intrenched on the hills of Fredericksburg. 
He of course abandoned at the outset all thought of at- 
tacking Lee in the front. Burnside's overthrow had 
ended that for good. Instead he determined to make 
a flank attack, crossing the Rappahannock and its 
tributary, the Rapidan, several miles above Fredericks- 
burg and, pressing on, swiftly fall upon Lee's flank 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 455 

and rear. To cover this movement he sent troops 
down the Rappahannock on the 21st of April, to 
openly build bridges and make ostentatious prepara- 
tions for a crossing. Lee was not deceived. On the 
contrary he wrote Jackson warning him to watch other 
portions of the line. He did not, however, discern 
Hooker's precise objective, and the Union force had 
passed both rivers and was at Chancellorsville before 
Lee was cognizant of the advance. Hooker was ex- 
ultant. " The rebel army is now the legitimate prop- 
erty of the Army of the Potomac," he cried. " They 
may as well pack up their haversacks and make for 
Richmond and I shall be after them." 

Hooker was now at Chancellorsville — not a town 
but a stately manor house in the midst of cultivated 
fields which, in turn, were surrounded by miles of dense 
forests of scrub oak and stunted timber known as 
" The Wilderness." 

A writer who has visited every part of this historic 
spot, says of it: " There all is wild, desolate, and lugu- 
brious. Thicket, undergrowth, and jungle stretch for 
miles, impenetrable and untouched. Narrow roads 
wind on forever between melancholy masses of stunted 
and gnarled oak. Little sunlight shines there — the 
face of nature is dreary and sad. It was so before 
the battle; it is not more cheerful to-day, when, as 
you ride along, you see fragments of shell, rotting 
knapsacks, rusty gun-barrels, bleached bones, and grin- 
ning skulls. Into this jungle General Hooker pene- 
trated. It was the wolf in his den, ready to tear 
anyone who approached. A battle there seemed 
impossible. Neither side could see its antagonist. 
Artillery could not move; cavalry could not operate; 
the very infantry had to flatten their bodies to glide 
between the stunted trees." 

The Chancellor house, which gave to the battle its 



456 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

name, was about eight miles from the Confederate 
lines at Marye's Hill. In the first three divisions to 
reach this spot Hooker had 46,000 men, and Sigel, 
who came up soon after, brought 18,000 more. Con- 
fronting Lee was Sedgwick with some 70,000 men. 
Hooker's whole army, which he described as " the fin- 
est army on the planet" numbered 122,000 infantry 
and artillery, about 12,000 cavalry, and 400 cannon. 
Lee had in all no more than 60,000 men and 170 guns. 

The campaign of Chancellorsville was short. It 
began and ended In the few days between April 27 
and May 5. The actual battle was of four days' dura- 
tion, beginning on the ist of May. All the military 
movements generally comprehended under the name of 
the battle of Chancellorsville seem to be naturally clas- 
sified into three groups, viz : 

The fighting about Chancellorsville and in the Wil- 
derness. 

Sedgwick's assault on the heights of Fredericks- 
burg. 

Stoneman's cavalry raid. 

Let us consider the events under the first classifica- 
tion, which occurred under the direct personal super- 
vision of General Hooker, until he was wounded late 
in the action. 

On the night of the 30th of April, General Hooker 
had, as we have said, 46,000 men at Chancellorsville, 
with 18,000 more within supporting distance. No foe 
of any great strength barred his path to Fredericks- 
burg. Anderson's Confederate division alone was in 
the way, but that puny force, unsupported and unpro- 
vided with defensive works of any sort, might have 
been speedily brushed aside. Jackson was in Port 
Royal, Lee in Fredericksburg, all his energies bent to 
discovering whether Sedgwick's attack in his front 
was formidable or only a feint. The roads were ex- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 457 

cellent; the night bright moonlight. Hooker had 
three or four hours of daylight, and all of a bright 
night in which to crown his brilliant strategy with a 
brilliant victory, for there is little doubt that had he, 
instead of halting at Chancellorsville, pressed on, he 
could have routed Anderson, and destroyed Lee and 
Jackson in detail. 

The bright night was passed by the Confederates 
in active preparations for the coming battle. Ander- 
son's men worked all night with axe and pick and 
shovel, building breastworks and redoubts along their 
front. Jackson's men spent the night on the road, 
and together with the division of McLaws, reached 
Anderson's lines early in the morning. So Hooker, 
who the night before had had victory fairly within his 
grasp, now saw all of Lee's army, save one brigade 
and one division, thrust between him and his prize. 

Fighting began almost simultaneously all along the 
line, and the Union soldiers were going into battle full 
of enthusiasm, when orders arrived from General 
Hooker to abandon the advanced positions and retire 
to the vicinity of the Chancellor house. This order 
was received with deep disgust by officers and soldiers 
alike. The enthusiasm aroused by the successful 
march around the enemy's flank was quenched in a 
moment by the order for a retreat. General Couch, 
after withdrawing his division in accordance with the 
order, went to report to Hooker at Chancellorsville. 

" It's all right. Couch," said Hooker as he entered, 
" I have got Lee just where I want him; he must fight 
me on my own ground." 

" The retrograde movement had prepared me for 
something of the sort," wrote General Couch years 
afterward, " but to hear from his own lips that the 
advantages gained by the successful marches of his 
lieutenants were to culminate in fighting a defensive 



458 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

battle in that nest of thickets was too much, and I re- 
tired from his presence with the belief that my com- 
manding general was a whipped man." 

That night the Union troops spent in throwing up a 
circle of defensive works that surrounded the Chan- 
cellor house. The Confederates for their part were 
not idle. There was no lack of work with the axe, 
the pick, and the shovel in their camp. But the work 
which counted most in the great battle of the next 
day was done by two men, sitting alone by a midnight 
campfire, with no tools save a map of the country about 
Chancellorsville. Seated on a pair of boxes, by the 
side of a flickering fire, Lee and Jackson discussed the 
situation and the best plan for attacking the men in 
their front. Jackson wished to try his favorite manoeu- 
vre — a march to the flank and rear of his antagonist. 
He pointed out to Lee that whatever was to be done 
must be done quickly. Hooker had already ninety 
thousand men to confront their forty-five thousand, 
and Sedgwick would soon cross the river, drive away 
the slender force left on Marye's Hill, and join 
Hooker. To assault the Union position in front would 
be futile. It was practically impregnable. But by 
taking a by-path through the woods, out of sight and 
hearing of the enemy, Jackson thought he could lead 
a column of twenty-five thousand men around, and fall 
upon the right flank of Hooker's army at Dowdall's 
tavern, where no attack was looked for and no earth- 
works were built. 

Jackson's plan was accepted, and daybreak saw his 
column on the road. Twenty-seven thousand men 
were in line, and as the country highway was narrow, 
the column of marching regiments, artillery trains, and 
ambulances stretched out for three or four miles. 
Every possible effort was made to follow a route se- 
cure from the observation of the Federals, who mean- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 459 

while were standing in their trenches awaiting an at- 
tack, from the east. Many of the blue-coats who had 
been in battle with Stonewall Jackson before were wor- 
ried by the seeming inactivity of the Confederates, and 
surmised that that much dreaded commander was up 
to one of his old tricks again. Despite Jackson's care, 
his line brushed against some of the outposts of the 
Union army, and the alarm was given. But the Fed- 
erals did not seem to appreciate the danger that threat- 
ened them, and made no move beyond sending General 
Sickles, with two divisions, to attack the marching 
column. This Sickles did, and having cut off and cap- 
tured a Georgia regiment, returned to the Union lines 
satisfied with his exploit, and ignorant of the threaten- 
ing nature of the movement he had momentarily inter- 
rupted. 

" You fellows think you've done a pretty smart 
thing," said one of the Confederate prisoners, " but 
just wait until Old Jack gets around on your flank." 

Even this failed to arouse the Federals to a sense 
of their position, and General Hooker, though he sent 
word to Howard, who was on the right, to look out 
for a flank attack, still thought that this marching 
column of Confederates meant retreat, and said glee- 
fully to General Couch, " Lee is in full retreat toward 
Gordonsville, and I have sent out Sickles to capture 
his artillery." 

It was about the middle of the afternoon that Stone- 
wall Jackson saw his troops in position to deliver an 
assault upon Hooker's left wing. With two or three 
officers he rode forward to a wooded knoll, whence he 
could look down upon his enemy. The sight he saw 
made the light of battle flash exultantly in his eyes. 
There were Howard's men, playing cards, eating, 
sleeping, loafing about, and amusing themselves, with 
no thought of impending danger. There was a line 



46o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of breastworks, a row of abatis, but the soldiers who 
should hold them were out of line and their muskets 
were stacked. For a moment Jackson gazed spell- 
bound upon the scene. His lips moved in prayer. 
Then wheeling his horse he rode back to order the at- 
tack upon the army thus laid out at his mercy. 

Meantime no word of caution had been heeded by 
the men in Howard's lines. More than one warning 
had reached them, but thought of danger was scoffed 
at. " Horseman after horseman rode into my post, 
and was sent to headquarters with the information that 
the enemy were heavily marching along our front and 
proceeding to our right; and last of all an officer re- 
ported the rebels massing for attack/' So wrote 
General Noble, then a colonel commanding two com- 
panies on Howard's picket line. " Howard scouted 
the report and insulted the informants, charging them 
with telling a story that was the offspring of their 
imaginations or their fears." 

Nevertheless the story brought in by the Union 
pickets was correct. The woods were full of Confed- 
erates, and they came quick after the retreating pickets. 
The first warning the Federals had was a rush of 
rabbits, squirrels, game birds, and serpents driven 
from their haunts in the leafy recesses of the wilder- 
ness by the advance of the long line of Jackson's men. 
Then came the sharp reports of rifle-shots along the 
skirmish line, and then the rush of an overwhelming 
force of men in gray carrying everything before 
them. 

" I was playing cards in the ditch, and the first 
thing I knew I saw the enemy looking down upon me 
from the crest of the parapet," writes an officer of 
Howard's corps. 

Jackson himself must have been surprised by the 
effect of his charge, so completely successful was it. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 461 

The troops upon whom he had so impetuously fallen 
were chiefly new recruits — Germans of Schurz's bri- 
gade, still untried on the field of battle. They made 
no attempt to stay the furious onslaught of their foes, 
but broke and fled. The correspondent of a Northern 
newspaper thus described the scene: 

The fl3'ing Germans came dashing over the field in crowds, 
stampeded and running as only men do run when convinced that 
sure destruction is awaiting them. On one hand was a solid column 
of infantry retreating at double-quick; on the other was a dense 
mass of human beings who were flying as fast as their legs would 
carry them, followed up by the rebels pouring their murderous vol- 
leys in upon us, yelling and hooting to increase the confusion; hun- 
dreds of cavalry horses, left riderless at the first discharge from the 
rebels, dashing frantically about in all directions ; scores of batteries 
flying from the field ; battery wagons, ambulances, horses, men, 
cannon, caissons, all jumbled and tumbled together in one inextrica- 
ble mass — and the murderous fire of the rebels still pouring in upon 
them! To add to the terror of the occasion there was but one 
means of escape from the field, and that through a little narrow 
neck or ravine washed out by Scott's Creek. Toward this the con- 
fused mass plunged headlong. On came the panic-stricken crowd, 
terrified artillery riders spurring and lashing their horses to their 
utmost ; ambulances upsetting and being lashed to pieces against 
trees and stumps ; horses dashing over the field ; men flying and 
crying with alarm — a perfect torrent of passion apparently uncon- 
trollable. 

Behind this routed, disorganized mass of fugitives 
the Confederates pressed on, exultant, triumphant, in- 
satiable in their thirst for conquest. Jackson himself 
rode in the pursuing force, and the Confederates would 
now and again look over to " Old Jack," hear him 
cry, " Press forward, men, press forward," and re- 
double their efforts. " Frequently during the fiercest 
of the conflict," writes one of his staff, " he would 
stop, raise his hand, and turn his eyes toward heaven, 
as if praying for a blessing on our arms. On several 
occasions during the fight, as he passed the dead bodies 
of some of our veterans, he halted and raised his hand 



462 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

as if to ask a blessing upon them, and pray God to 
save their souls." 

Darkness now had fallen. Both armies were ex- 
hausted, but rest was not for either. The Federals 
were hurrying forward fresh troops to strengthen the 
line which so precariously held the foe in check. The 
Confederates for their part — at least those of the divi- 
sions which had hitherto done the fighting — were unfit 
to continue. " Federal writers do not realize the con- 
dition of our troops after their successful charge on 
Howard," writes General Colston. " We had forced 
our way through brush so dense that the troops were 
nearly stripped of their uniforms. Brigades, regi- 
ments, and companies had become so mixed that they 
could not be handled; besides which the darkness 
of evening was so intensified by the shade of the 
dense woods that nothing could be seen a few yards 
off." 

But General Jackson was no man to relinquish an 
advantage once gained. Black though the night might 
be, he proposed to continue the fight until the panic that 
had seized upon the Eleventh Corps should extend to 
the entire Union army. To this end he was hurrying 
forward fresh troops to take the places of those whose 
tattered and demoralized condition General Colston 
has described. In his zeal to carry this movement to 
success he galloped forward on one of the side roads, 
and passed the front of his own army. 

" General, don't you think this is the wrong place 
for you? " asked one of his staff. 

" The danger is all over— the enemy is routed ! Go 
back and tell A. P; Hill to press right on." 

And so, his mind fixed on the progress of the battle, 
and wholly oblivious to his own position, Jackson con- 
tinued his perilous ride between the hostile lines, until 
suddenly there came a volley from a dark thicket; 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 463 

nearly all of Jackson's staff were killed, and the general 
himself was desperately wounded. 

It was a detachment of Jackson's own troops that 
fired this fatal volley. They saw horsemen coming 
from the direction of the enemy's line and made sure 
it was a hostile force. Their volley wounded General 
Jackson with three bullets; three bones were broken, 
and an artery in his arm cut. With his gauntlet fast 
filling with blood, he reeled from his horse into the 
arms of an officer. 

A litter was hastily improvised, and the wounded 
general was borne from that place, which was within 
a hundred yards of the Union lines and across which 
the shells were now sweeping. Columns of Confeder- 
ate soldiers were passed going to the front. They 
looked with curiosity at the large group of officers 
escorting a litter to the rear. Who could the wounded 
man be? The bearers concealed Jackson's face, and 
gave evasive answers to all who asked. 

" Tell them it is a wounded officer," said Jackson 
faintly. 

"Great God! It is General Jackson," cried one 
soldier, who caught sight of his chieftain's face and 
was not to be deceived. 

When the hospital was reached, the surgeons exam- 
ined the wounds of the sufferer and found that the 
shattered arm must be amputated. The operation was 
soon performed, and the patient rested easily for a 
time. He heard the reports from the battle field, 
where the fight raged fiercely for three more days. 
But the rough usage he had met while being borne from 
the field, the falls he had suffered, and the long delay 
in getting under the care of the surgeons were too 
much for even Jackson's strong constitution. Pneu- 
monia set in, and death then approached with rapid 
strides. At the last moment he became delirious, and 



464 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

thought himself on the field of battle. Orders came 
fast from his lips: 

" Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action! " 

" Pass the infantry to the front ! " 

" Tell Major Hawkes to send forward provisions 
to the men! " 

After a few moments of this martial fervor, a 
change seemed to come over the spirit of his dream. 
His face became serene, his excitement vanished. With 
a gentle smile on his lips he murmured: 

" Let us cross over the river and rest under the 
shade of the trees." 

With this gentle and beautiful phrase on his lips the 
great Confederate leader passed away. 

The verdict of history will rank no general, Union 
or Confederate, above Jackson. His was in many re- 
spects the phenomenal military genius of the war. His 
power as a disciplinarian fitly supplemented his skill 
as a tactician. His strategy, often conceived in seem- 
ing violation of all military theories, would more than 
once have resulted in disaster had he not at hand a 
body of steel-muscled, iron-hearted veterans ready to 
march and fight, day and night, so long as " Old Jack " 
led them. His death was the beginning of the Con- 
federacy's downfall. 

It was nine o'clock at night when Jackson was struck 
down and no further successes were scored by his 
army that night. In the morning General *' Jeb " 
Stuart, who had succeeded to Jackson's command, and 
who was eager to prove himself as efl5cient a division 
commander as he was a dashing cavalry leader, 
charged savagely on the Union batteries at Fairview 
and Hazel Grove. The advance begun by Jackson 
was continued and the Union forces fell into confusion 
because of the absence of the commanding general. 
A series of injuries had befallen Hooker. A massive 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 465 

pillar against which he was leaning was struck by a: 
solid shot, and split in twain. The shock knocked the 
general senseless, and his whole side was bruised in 
such a way as to cause him intense pain. Reviving 
after a few moments he mounted his horse and tried 
to ride away to the centre of the new position of his 
army, but the pain overcame him, and he was forced 
to dismount and lie down. A little brandy renewed 
his strength. He rose and walked away and an instant 
later a round shot struck the centre of the blanket on 
which he had been lying and scooped a great hole in 
the ground beneath. " The enemy was after me with 
a sharp stick that day," said Hooker years after, in 
speaking of his two narrow escapes. 

The pain of his wound unfitted Hooker for the 
further command of the army, and thereafter the battle 
was fought at haphazard on the part of the Federals. 
The result of this lack of a directing head was that 
division commanders went into the battle or stayed 
out according to their own volition, and enough stayed 
out for the battle of Chancellorsville to end in a com- 
plete victory for the Confederates. 

As Lee sat on his horse near the blazing Chancellor 
mansion — which at daylight that morning had been the 
headquarters of the Federal general and at night was 
ruined and burning in the very centre of the Confed- 
erate line — a courier galloped up to him bearing Gen- 
eral Jackson's congratulations upon his victory. " Say 
to General Jackson," responded Lee with much feeling, 
" that the victory is his and that the congratulations 
are due to him." 

It will be remembered that part of Hooker's original 
plan of battle had been that Sedgwick should cross 
the Rappahannock River before Fredericksburg and 
attack the Confederates in front, while Hooker fell on 
them from the rear. The activity of Jackson defeated 



466 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Hooker's progress and the battle with that general's 
forces was fought some distance from Fredericksburg. 
Nevertheless, about ten thousand Confederates were 
left in the line of breastworks which had been so gal- 
lantly held against Burnside in December, and against 
this force Sedgwick moved on the morning of May 3. 
Marye's Hill was again the scene of conflict. Once 
more the stone-wall and the sunken road sheltered the 
Confederate infantry. This time, however, the 
charge of the Federals was successful. A private sol- 
dier in a Massachusetts regiment thus tells the story: 

The assault took place Sunday, May 3, at about eleven o'clock 
A.M., the Seventh Massachusetts leading the left column, the Thirty- 
sixth New York volunteers in support. Our company leading the 
Seventh, consequently caught the whole body of the first fire of the 
Johnnies, which they withheld until we were certainly within twenty- 
five yards. As some of the officers sang out " Retreat ! Retreat ! " 
the men began to yell, " Forward ! don't go back ! we sha'n't get 
so close up again." Just before, and in front of the wall, facing 
down the street is a house, standing in a small plat, V-shaped, and 
inclosed by a high board-fence. This wall in our front, along the 
base of the hill, was a rough stone-wall forming the rear bank of 
the sunken road, while on our side, in front of the sunken road, 
was a good stone-wall even with the level of the field. In this 
sunken road were two Confederate lines of battle, the front line 
firing on our charging lines on the left of the road, and the rear 
line sitting on their heels, with their backs against the terrace wall 
at the base of the hill and rear of the road. About opposite the 
right of our regiment was a depression on the hill made some time, 
I should think, by water from the land above, but now grassed 
over ; at the head of this depression was a battery, placed, I suppose, 
to rake the ravine or depression. Some one looked through the 
board fence and saw the enemy's flank. In a moment the men 
rushed to the fence and we went through, pell-mell right upon 
the flank of the Confederates, at the same time giving them the 
contents of the muskets point-blank, without aiming. The whole 
thing was a surprise. They were not prepared for anything from 
this quarter, as we were hidden from them and they from us, by 
the house and fence. 

Having carried the heights Sedgewick pressed on 
toward Chancellorsville, thinking to fall upon the rear 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 467 

of Lee's army there. But Lee had learned that Sedg- 
wick was attacking the position on Marye's Hill, and 
had sent part of his troops back to meet the Federals 
at Salem church where the Confederates had a line of 
intrenchments. In these trenches the men who had 
fled from the sunken road rallied, so that Sedgwick, 
on arriving at that point after a three-mile march, 
found a very considerable force arrayed against him. 
With charge and countercharge the afternoon passed 
away, neither side gaining any notable advantage. 
Darkness put an end to the fray, just as Sedgwick was 
preparing for a final grand assault which he felt con- 
fident would carry the day. 

Here, then, were the positions of the armies on the 
night of May 3, after the last charge had been made 
and the echoes of the last cannon shot had died away: 
Hooker, with the chief part of the Union army, was 
near Chancellorsville, holding the position to which 
he had been driven during the morning; confronting 
Hooker was Lee with some 45,000 Confederates; 
down the road toward Fredericksburg, in the trenches 
by the Salem church, was McLaws; confronting him 
was Sedgwick with about 15,000 blue-coats; in Fred- 
ericksburg were the wounded of Sedgwick's command 
with about 2,000 effective men to protect them; and 
finally down the river below Fredericksburg was Early, 
with a force of 6,000 Confederate infantry. 

The morning's light saw some marked changes in 
these dispositions of the troops. Confident from 
Hooker's actions hitherto that he would make no at- 
tack on the morrow, Lee on the night of the 3d sent 
twenty-five thousand men down the road to the aid 
of McLaws. Early spent the night on the road, too, 
and when dawn broke his six thousand men were in the 
old position on Marye's Hill, which Sedgwick had 
taken and then abandoned. So, instead of being in a 



468 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

position to fall upon the rear of Lee's army with tell- 
ing effect, General Sedgwick, found himself with a 
force of double his number before him, and six thou- 
sand of the enemy in his rear. He saw speedily that 
the time for offensive action on his part was past, and 
that henceforth his one task was to save his army from 
annihilation. Had Lee attacked him early in the day 
this might have been impossible, but that commander 
spent the day in arranging his lines and it was not un- 
til six o'clock in the evening that he began the assault. 
The Confederates were gallantly repulsed, losing 
several hundred prisoners. That night Sedgwick's 
corps recrossed the river to the north side, where they 
were soon joined by Hooker, who abandoned his dead 
and wounded on the field of Chancellorsville, and fled 
in the night. 

So ended the battle of Chancellorsville, — ended in 
defeat and humiliation for Hooker; in victory and 
glory for Lee. The Federals had been cleanly out- 
generaled. An opportunity to demolish Lee's army 
had been lost. So far as the actual valor shown by 
the soldiers of the two armies is concerned there Is no 
reason to rank either above the other. But Jackson's 
flanking march with its complete success, and Lee's 
brilliant strategy, which enabled him to beat Hooker 
and then lead his whole force against Sedgwick, were 
the two factors which determined the outcome of the 
battle. 

The losses on each side were heavy. According to 
the official reports the Federals lost 17,197 men, of 
whom 12,197 were among the killed and wounded. 
The Confederates for their part reported a loss of 
13,019, of whom 10,266 were among the killed and 
wounded. But the triumph at Chancellorsville cost 
the South one soldier whose loss could never be re- 
placed, and whose death marked the beginning of the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 469 

end of the Confederacy — Stonewall Jackson. Through- 
out the early years of the war Jackson was Lee's right 
arm. No jealousy existed between them. The sol- 
dier of inferior rank gave to his commander unques- 
tioned obedience, and Lee In his turn gave to his sub- 
ordinate the fullest confidence. How greatly Lee felt 
the loss of his able associate his utterances at the time 
tell. How correctly he estimated the effect of that loss 
we shall see when we come to read of the battle of 
Gettysburg. 



CHAPTER XXI 

Lee's Invasion of Pennsylvania — Retirement of Hooker — Meade in 
Command of the Army of the Potomac — The Battle of Gettys- 
burg — Pickett's Famous Charge — Lee Retreats to Virginia. 

The battle of Chancellorsville left the Union army de- 
feated, dejected, and demoralized; the Confederate 
army victorious, exultant, and supremely self-confident. 
The whole North was cast down, depressed, and doubt- 
ful of the issue of the war; the South was exhilarated, 
triumphant, pouring new levies into Lee's ranks and 
calling upon him to abandon the defensive attitude and 
lead the veteran Southern hosts into Northern terri- 
tory. The attitude of foreign nations, notably Eng- 
land and France who were just on the verge of recog- 
nizing the Confederate States as a new nation, justified 
the demand. The valor of the Southern troops had 
won world-wide respect, the extent and character of the 
Confederate military and civil organization made it 
impossible to regard them as mere rebels. If they 
could transfer the theatre of war to the Northern 
states their complete recognition would be assured. 

The Army of the Potomac was in a sorely weakened 
condition. True, it still outnumbered the Confeder- 
ates greatly. The reports for June 30, 1863, fixed 
its strength at 1 15,256 officers and men, with 362 guns, 
while the Confederate reports for May 31, gave Lee 
76,224 officers and men and 272 guns. The Federal 
army was better clothed, shod, fed, and armed. But 
its morale had suffered from its repeated reverses, and 
quarrels among its superior officers menaced its disci- 
pline. President Lincoln came in person to the camp, 

470 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 471 

hoping to revive the drooping spirits of the men. 
Hooker met him with a letter of resignation which 
the President refused to accept. General Couch there- 
upon resigned, refusing to serve longer under Hooker. 
But the latter general, though continued in command, 
seemed to have lost the confidence of his military su- 
periors. Every suggestion he made for offensive 
action against Lee was vetoed by the authorities at 
Washington, and at last on the 27th of June, declaring 
that he " was not permitted to manoeuvre his own 
troops in the presence of the enemy," he asked to be 
relieved from command and his request was granted. 

Hooker was succeeded by General George G. Meade, 
who inherited not merely an army, but the beginning 
of a great battle. For by this time Lee's army was in 
Pennsylvania, Ewell's force having led the way 
thither by the oft-used Shenandoah Valley route. A. 
P. Hill and Longstreet followed Ewell, all making 
toward Harrisburg. 

Pennsylvania was panic-stricken. Though the gov- 
ernor issued a proclamation calling the people to arms, 
there was a sad dearth of volunteers. It is worth not- 
ing that the first company that marched to the defence 
of Harrisburg was made up of students of the Penn- 
sylvania College — sixty mere striplings led by a theo- 
logical student. All through the country which lay 
in the path of the invading army, the people were hur- 
riedly sending away their horses, and cattle, their grain 
and fruit, their household goods, money, and portable 
property generally. Nor was the panic confined to 
the people of the rural districts in Lee's immediate 
front. In Philadelphia many bankers hastened to send 
the treasures from their vaults to New York for safe- 
keeping. Ladies sent away their jewels and families 
their plate. Not even New York was considered safe, 
and goods were sent to Boston and to Albany. A 



472 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

proclamation by the mayor closed all the manufac- 
tories, work-shops, and stores of Philadelphia, and 
sent the people of the city out into the suburbs to build 
earthworks. Baltimore did likewise, and the police 
of the city impressed into the service over a thousand 
negroes, slaves and freedmen alike, and put them to 
work in the trenches. Even Washington was not 
wholly exempt from panic, though the people there 
enjoyed the consoling thought that the government 
would never allow the National Capital to be entered 
by the enemy so long as a single regiment could be 
rallied to its defence. 

Meantime the long, dense columns of men in gray 
were moving rapidly northward over the level roads 
and green fields of Pennsylvania. Ewell kept far in 
advance, having nothing to fear, as there were no 
troops save raw militia in his neighborhood. He 
made heavy demands for supplies upon the towns 
through which he passed. From the town of Cham- 
bersburg he required 5,000 suits of clothing, 10 tons 
of leather, 5 tons of horseshoes, 5,000 bushels of oats, 
3 tons of lead, 1,000 currycombs, 500 barrels of flour, 
and all the ammunition in town. At York the de- 
mands of the Confederates were equally heavy, and 
there was actually handed over to them $28,000 in 
cash, 200 barrels of fiour, 40,000 pounds of fresh 
beef, 30,000 bushels of corn, and 1,000 pairs of shoes. 

But though the heavy demands made by Ewell upon 
the people of the captured towns were perfectly justi- 
fied by the laws of war the precedent set by him was 
not that which guided the Confederate army as a 
whole in its actions while in an enemy's country. The 
moderation, the humanity, the regard for the rights 
of property shown by these half-starved Southerners 
in a land overflowing with plenty must ever be mem- 
orable. " The duties exacted of us by civilization 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 473 

and Christianity," said Lee, in an order directing his 
troops to abstain from all rapine and pillage, " are 
not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than 
in our own. The commanding general therefore ear- 
nestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupu- 
lous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private 
property; and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and 
bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way 
offend against his orders on this subject." 

Almost universal obedience was paid both to the 
letter and the spirit of this order. The Southern army 
marched through lanes bordered on either side by 
fruit trees with heavily laden boughs, past barnyards 
and pigsties that made the alert foragers yearn for an 
opportunity to show their peculiar skill, and by herds 
of cattle that brought visions of luscious steaks to the 
eyes of the hungry soldiers; yet seldom was any thiev- 
ing committed. " By way of giving the devil his due," 
wrote the correspondent of a Northern newspaper con- 
cerning General Jenkins, who commanded Early's cav- 
alry, " it must be said that although there were over 
sixty acres of wheat, and eighty acres of corn in the 
same field he protected it most carefully, and picketed 
his horses so that it could not be injured. No fences 
were wantonly destroyed, poultry was not disturbed, 
nor did he compliment our blooded cattle so much as 
to test the quality of their steak and roast." 

While this invasion of Pennsylvania was seemingly 
unopposed Lee was in fact, unwittingly, facing a great 
danger. Stuart's cavalry has been often referred to 
as " the eyes and ears of Lee's army." This function 
it had always up to this time discharged with singular 
trustworthiness, the troopers hovering always along 
the Federal lines and keeping General Lee thoroughly 
posted as to any movement on the part of his adver- 
sary. On this occasion, however, Stuart, after a series 



474 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of sharp clashes with the Union cavalry under Pleas- 
anton, went off on one of those raids around the 
Union army which were always his pride and delight. 
Daring as the raid was and greatly as it embarrassed 
the Union commander whose communications were cut 
and stores destroyed by the raiders, it was in this in- 
stance a positive injury to General Lee, For when 
Hooker discovered that the Confederates had left 
their position on the Rappahannock, and followed them 
by a parallel course, Stuart was far away and Lee had 
reached Pennsylvania before he knew that Hooker 
was keeping pace with him. When he did learn this 
he suddenly checked the northward movement of his 
advanced division and concentrated his force at 
Cashtown. He saw clearly enough that should the 
Federals get between him and Richmond one battle 
might exhaust his ammunition and he could get no 
more. 

A trifling accident brought about the battle which 
proved to be the true turning point in the Civil War. 
The news having come to General Hill, at Cashtown, 
that there was a large store of shoes for the Federal 
troops at the neighboring Pennsylvania town of Gettys- 
burg he sent forward General Pettigrew with a bri- 
gade to get them. There seems never to have been a 
time when the Confederate soldiers did not need shoes. 
Pettigrew discovered that besides shoes there were 
a considerable number of Federal troops in Gettys- 
burg, and he retired reporting that fact to Hill, who, 
thinking they were only Pennsylvania militia, sent a 
larger force to drive them away. The troops first 
seen, however, were Buford's cavalry division, and its 
commander, convinced that the forces of Hill and Long- 
street were before him, sent in hot haste for reeforce- 
ments. When A. P. Hill with two divisions — those of 
Heth and Pender — came back July ist after the shoes 




Inderwood & Underwood, N". Y 



LETTERS HOME 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 475 

Buford had force enough to check them and suddenly 
a battle was raging which neither Lee nor Meade had 
sought. 

Let us consider for a moment the topography of 
the region in which the two great armies, each made 
up of the flower of the section that it represented, were 
to clinch in mortal combat. Gettysburg, the village 
which gave its name to the battle, was a little country 
town, quiet, dull, far from the great highways of 
trade and commerce. Some military importance it 
had, because of the many good roads concentrating 
there, and this fact had led General Meade to send 
General Buford to take possession of the place. It 
was Buford's outposts that Pettigrew had seen on the 
day before. Two streams flowing almost parallel in 
a north and south course drained the fertile fields about 
Gettysburg. The one to the west of the town was 
called Willoughby Run; that to the east was Rock 
Creek. Chains of hills — ridges they called them — also 
clustered about the town extending north and south. 
Directly west of the village, lying between its outskirts 
and the banks of Willoughby Run, was Seminary Ridge, 
so called from the dome crowned building of the Lu- 
theran Seminary that stood upon its crest. Directly 
south of the city was Cemetery Ridge, on the grassy 
slopes of which the town burial-ground was situated. 
A ponderous gateway in the style of a triumphal arch 
formed the entrance to the cemetery and was a promi- 
nent feature in the landscape. West of the southern 
end of Cemetery Ridge was the peach orchard of 
Farmer Sherfy. At the very southern end of Ceme- 
tery Ridge two bold hillocks rose above the level of the 
surrounding hills. Round Top, the southernmost 
and larger of the two was called; Little Round Top 
the other. Just east of the town sloping down to 
Rock Creek was Culp's Hill. 



476 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

In a general way the object of the first day's fight- 
ing at Gettysburg was the position on Seminary Ridge. 
This was occupied by the Federals in the morning but 
taken by the Confederates before night. During the 
daylight hours of July i, was fought a battle which 
alone would have been one of the great struggles of 
the war but which was overshadowed by the even more 
titanic contests of the two succeeding days. When 
the troops of General Heth clashed with Buford the 
Confederate soldiers exclaimed in disgust, " This ain't 
no militia! It's the d — d black-hatted fellows again." 
The two commands had felt each other's mettle before 
and the Confederates, expecting to encounter only 
militia, were unpleasantly surprised. They pressed on 
savagely, however, and were driving the Federals 
before them when General Reynolds came up and 
stayed their progress. Reynolds was soon killed, and 
was succeeded in command by General Doubleday. 
By this time the noise of the battle and the reports 
of galloping aides had convinced the two chief com- 
manders that Gettysburg was likely to be the theatre 
of a more important military drama than a skirmish 
for a few thousand pairs of shoes. Meade sent Gen- 
eral Howard post haste to take command of the field, 
and General Carl Schurz, distinguished later in politi- 
cal life, was posted along Seminary Ridge with one 
division on Cemetery Hill. Generals were numerous 
on the Union line that day. Buford, Sickles, Slocum, 
Reynolds, Schurz, Doubleday, and Howard were all 
actively engaged when Meade added Hancock to the 
list with command over all. To Hancock was due 
largely the fortunate issue of Gettysburg for the Union 
arms, and he won there the sobriquet " The Superb," 
which not even the slime of a later unsuccessful cam- 
paign for the presidency could wholly obscure. Han- 
cock's quick eye discovered in Cemetery Hill a com- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 477 

manding spot, and there he posted a heavy battery, 
sending word to all his division commanders that there 
should be the spot of concentration should the Con- 
federates prove successful in their efforts to gain 
Seminary Ridge. Meantime he hurried up reenforce- 
ments to every point on his lines, for it was evident 
that a great battle was beginning. 

It was while these troops were marching along the 
roads and through the fields to their designated 
stations, that a little old man, wearing a swallow- 
tailed coat with smooth, bright, brass buttons, came 
up alongside of the Seventh Wisconsin regiment, and 
fell in step with the men of Company N. The men 
in the ranks began to make fun of him. 

" Better quit this crowd, old fellow," said one. 
*' The fighting will be hot where we are going." 

" I know how to fight," responded the old man 
earnestly; " I have fit before." 

" Where's your cartridge box? " sung out one of 
the company wits. " You'll need something to put in 
your gun when you get down yonder." 

" I've got plenty of cartridges in here," was the 
answer, as the old fellow slapped his trousers pocket. 
" I can get my hands in here quicker than in a box. 
I'm not used to them new-fangled things." 

By a little questioning the soldiers found out that 
their strange companion was John Burns, a Gettysburg 
farmer. The rebels had driven away his cows, he 
said, and he proposed to seek vengeance on the battle 
field. When the first volley came the soldiers looked 
around to see their civilian friend run away, but he 
stood his ground bravely and fought until three wounds 
gave him ample excuse for seeking the rear. 

All the afternoon Ewell's men pressed the Fed- 
erals savagely, carrying one position after another, 
crushing Carl Schurz and taking five thousand of his 



478 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

men prisoners. One after another the Federal corps 
commanders ordered their men to fall back and 
re-form at Cemetery Hill, where Steinwehr's battery 
was desperately contending with the enemy. When 
Lee reached the field about two o'clock it looked like 
a battle already won. He ordered Ewell, who had 
discontinued the pursuit, to press the fugitives and 
take Cemetery Hill " if possible." Military critics 
say that " if " cost Lee the battle of Gettysburg. 
Ewell did not think it possible to carry the hill and 
made no attack. The next day and the day after the 
Confederate army fairly beat itself to pieces against 
the hill which by that time had been heavily re- 
enforced and crowded with cannon. Perhaps the 
critics are wrong. Possibly the hill could not have 
been carried that afternoon of July i when the Union 
army at every other point on the field was in full 
retreat. But professional military students hold that 
the battle of Gettysburg was largely decided by Han- 
cock's quick discernment of Cemetery Hill as a rallying 
point, and by Lee's failure to positively order the as- 
sault of that hill when the Confederate troops were 
everywhere victorious. Instead of ordering that at- 
tack he listened to reports from Longstreet and Hill, 
showing the position to be a formidable one and the 
Confederate troops much exhausted, and finally closed 
the council saying: " Gentlemen, we will attack the 
enemy in the morning as early as possible! " 

All the country roads leading into Gettysburg were 
choked that July night with marching men, galloping 
horsemen, rumbling trains of cannon, ambulances, and 
ammunition wagons. From the south and east the 
Federals, from the north and west the Confederates, 
were pressing on to Gettysburg. Accident had brought 
the foes into collision there, but the gauntlet had been 
thrown down and picked up. On a field of neither 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 479 

army's choosing, the destiny of the nation was to be 
fought out. 

In the gray dawn of the 2d of July, Generals Lee 
and Longstreet rode to the crest of Seminary Ridge, 
and, through their field-glasses scanned the Union 
position on Cemetery Hill. They saw the rows of 
cannon on the brow of the hill, the smoke of innumera- 
ble camp fires marking the situation of the Union 
troops already on the ground, the clouds of dust rising 
above the tree-tops everywhere betokening the rapid 
concentration of a great army. 

Lee's blood was up. The successes of the day 
before, added to the almost uninterrupted series of 
victories won by his army when opposed to the Army 
of the Potomac, inspired him with confidence. He 
forgot that he had come into Pennsylvania with the 
determination to fight none but defensive battles. 
The tactical superiority of Meade's position daunted 
him not a whit. 

" The enemy is there, and I am going to attack him 
there," he said with cool decision. 

Longstreet demurred. " Why not swing around to 
his left," said he, " and interpose between Meade and 
Washington? Then we can force him to give us 
battle on grounds of our own choosing." 

"No; they are there in position, and I am going 
to whip them or they are going to whip me." 

Lee spoke with determination, and the colloquy was 
ended. 

Meantime there had been some doubt in the mind 
of General Meade as to the wisdom of continuing the 
battle on the field of Gettysburg. Behind Pipe Creek, 
a small stream a few miles south of Gettysburg, the 
engineers of the Army of the Potomac had laid out a 
line of defence, and all Meade's strategy had been 
planned with the view of inducing Lee to fight him at 



48o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

that point. When Hancock was sent forward about 
the close of the first day's fighting to take the com- 
mand, it was with orders from Meade to withdraw 
the army to the Pipe Creek line. But a staff ofl^cer, 
who was present on Hancock's arrival, declares that 
that officer said to General Howard that he had been 
ordered to choose the Pipe Creek line, but that he 
thought the line then occupied, extending from Culp's 
Hill along Cemetery Ridge to Round Top, was " the 
strongest position by nature upon which to fight a 
battle " that he had ever seen, and accordingly deter- 
mined to stay and fight it out there. To this decision 
Meade, upon his arrival a little after midnight, 
agreed. 

The field of strife on the second and third days of 
the battle then lay wholly south of the town. The posi- 
tions held by the antagonists on the morning of the 2d of 
July were as follows : all along the crest of Seminary 
Ridge between the Emmitsburg and the Fairfield roads 
extended the Confederate line. Longstreet was farthest 
south; A. P. Hill joining him on the north. At Hill's 
left the line made a sharp bend to the east, Ewell's 
corps holding the streets of Gettysburg and extend- 
ing eastward on the Hanover road. The Confed- 
erate lines faced east and south. Before them 
stretched away a fertile plain for the space of a half 
a mile. Wheat fields, pastures, peach orchards, cosy 
farm-houses nestling among the trees, spacious farms 
well filled with garnered crops all told how the valley 
had prospered before the blight of war fell upon it. 
At its farther edge the plain sloped gently up to the 
petty acclivity called Culp's Hill, the high land which 
took its name from the cemetery which made its green 
crest glisten with white grave-stones, and the two 
bolder hills called Round Top and Little Round Top. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 481 

Along this series of hills extended the Union line. Its 
general contour was something like that of a horse- 
shoe with unequal arms. 

It was on the extreme left of the Union line that 
the fiercest fighting of the second day's battle occurred. 
As the battle of the first day was chiefly for the pos- 
session of Seminary Ridge, so on the second day 
Little Round Top was the point for which the warring 
hosts did battle. Two considerations led Lee to 
choose the Union left for his point of attack. Could 
he but once establish his batteries on Little Round 
Top he would hold all the Union lines at his mercy. 
Moreover General Sickles, who was stationed on the 
Union left, had been forced by the configuration of the 
country to arrange his lines in the form of a right 
angle — a formation that always invites attack. 

Longstreet was to make the attack upon Sickles. 
That attack should have been made at daybreak. It 
was not made until 4 P. M. The delay was fatal. 
Purely by accident, about noon. General Warren, 
Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac, inspect- 
ing the left of the Union line discovered that Little 
Round Top, the key to the Union position, was ab- 
solutely undefended. A couple of signal officers were 
there using it for an observation station, and, urging 
them to keep waving their flags as though signalling 
to a heavy force in the rear, Warren rushed off to find 
troops to hold the hill. These he secured barely in 
time, for the Confederates were already charging it. 
Colonel Vincent with a brigade of Union troops swung 
into line across the southern slope of the hill and 
opposed the Confederate advance. The boulders and 
outcropping ledges of rock with which the field was 
plentifully besprinkled greatly impeded the Confederate 
advance and afforded shelter for the defenders. 
Nevertheless the men in gray trudged boldly forward, 



482 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

passing through the zone of fire of a battery posted 
so as to enfilade their lines, breasting the pelting storm 
of bullets that came singing in their faces, sheltering 
themselves behind boulders whenever occasion offered 
long enough to load and fire a hasty shot, but all the 
time pressing onward and upward toward the thin 
line that stood between them and the crest of Little 
Round Top. " Sometimes the Federals would hold 
one side of the large boulders on the slope until the 
Confederates occupied the other," writes General 
Laws, whose troops were engaged in the assault. " In 
some cases my men, with reckless daring, mounted to 
the top of the large rocks in order to get a better 
view and to deliver their fire with better effect. One 
of these. Sergeant Barbee of the Texas brigade, hav- 
ing reached a rock a little in advance of the line, 
stood erect on the top of it loading and firing as 
coolly as if unconscious of danger, while the air around 
him was fairly swarming with bullets. He soon fell 
helpless from several wounds; but he held his rock, 
lying upon the top of it until the litter-bearers carried 
him off." 

So, fighting their way from stone to stone, the men 
of Law's division gradually made their way toward 
the top of the hill, forcing Vincent back before them. 
Near the crest the Federals made a determined stand. 
They met and repelled charges with the point of the 
bayonet; muskets were clubbed; pistols fired at point- 
blank range; jagged stones even were used as weapons 
of war. Once the Twentieth Maine with a superb 
charge swept the enemy from the hill, but the ground 
thus gained for the Union was soon lost again, for the 
Texans returned with dogged pertinacity to the assault. 

There was a reason for the stubbornness with 
which Vincent's men clung to their position. As they 
were forced back higher up the hillside the command- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 483 

ing features of the position became evident to the 
least skilled soldier in the ranks. All knew that with 
a Confederate force established on the crest of the 
hill, the whole Union position would be indefensible. 
They knew, too, that reenforcements were coming to 
their aid. Up the northern slope of the hill even at 
the moment O'Rorke's infantry was marching, fol- 
lowed by Hazlitt's battery. Seldom were guns ever 
dragged over so difficult a route. The steep hillside, 
cut up with gullies and obstructed everywhere with 
huge rocks, seemed impassable for heavy cannon. 
But the artillerymen put their shoulders to the wheels, 
levers wielded by a score of men at a time were 
brought into play, long ropes were fastened to the 
gun-carriages at which whole companies tugged, the 
straining horses were skilfully guided, and so after long 
and strenuous effort the battery swung into place on 
the crest of the hill. 

It was none too soon. With triumphant yells the 
Confederates were breaking through Vincent's line at 
half a dozen points. A few minutes more and they 
would have been in undisputed possession of the crest. 
But O'Rorke's regiment gave them a volley, and Haz- 
litt's guns opened with canister. The assailants, al- 
ready sorely weakened by their struggle up the slope, 
were dazed by this sudden and unexpected addition to 
their enemy's ranks. They wavered, but only for a 
moment; then returned to their work with renewed 
spirit. A contest at short range followed. Haz- 
litt's battery, which had so gallantly made its way to 
the crest of the hill, soon found that it could do but 
little execution owing to the steep slope of the hill- 
side. Still the guns were kept flashing and roaring, 
for the knowledge that they had artillery with them 
while the enemy had none gave added courage to the 
Union soldiers. Soon the short range fighting began 



484 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

to tell. Men fell fast on both sides. The gallant 
O'Rorke — only two years out of West Point — was 
shot dead. General Weed was struck to the ground 
with a mortal wound, and groaned as he lay dying 
on the stony ground, " I would rather die here than 
that the rebels should gain an inch of this ground." 
Lieutenant Hazlitt bent over his dying commander 
to catch his last words, and he, too, fell a victim to 
a flying bullet and was stretched dead across the body 
of his chief. Vincent, too, was quickly laid low. 
Though the losses of the Federals were heavy, it soon 
became evident that the fight was going against the 
Confederates. Reenforcements were necessary to 
enable them to hold the position they had won on the 
hill, but no reenforcements came. The Federals saw 
the signs of weakness spreading in the Confederate 
ranks, and redoubled their efforts. Faster the can- 
non roared; the rattle of the musketry grew louder. 
It became the turn of the Federals to advance, and 
they pressed the foe before them down the hill, until 
a final grand charge by the Twentieth Maine swept 
the last Texan and the last fluttering Confederate flag 
from the slope of Little Round Top. Near the foot 
of the hill, amid the heaped-up boulders and crags 
that formed the rocky fastness called by the country 
folk " Devil's Den," the disappointed men of the 
South rallied, and from that position could not be dis- 
lodged. We shall see them on the morrow renewing, 
from that point of attack, the fierce and fruitless strug- 
gle for Little Round Top. 

Lee's plan had been that when Longstreet attacked 
Little Round Top the troops of Early and Johnson 
should attack the Federals at the other, or northern 
end of Cemetery Hill. But the plan miscarried in 
some way and Longstreet's action was nearly ended 
before the advance against Cemetery Hill was begun. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 485 

The Confederate cannon had been pounding away 
at the slender earthworks that crested the hill all the 
afternoon, and when at sundown their fire, ceased, 
the defenders thought for a time that the close of day 
had brought a welcome truce. But soon a long line 
of men clad in butternut gray appeared from the grove 
whence the guns had a few moments before been roar- 
ing. The troops of Early and of Johnson were in 
that line of battle, prominent among the former 
that body of dashing soldiers known as the " Louisiana 
Tigers." It fell to the lot of the Tigers to charge 
straight up the hill into the very centre of the Union 
line. Right gallantly did the dashing fellows dis- 
charge their perilous duty. As with a shrill yell they 
started up the hill the batteries behind them, that had 
ceased firing to let the " Tigers " pass, now opened 
again and were soon throwing solid shot and shell 
into the Union position. But the Federal batteries 
were now in full cry. 

Disregarding altogether the enemy's artillery, the 
blue-clad cannoneers turned their pieces on that 
swiftly advancing line of gray. More than a score 
of guns were flaming and smoking and thundering on 
the brow of that green hill. Though sorely stricken 
by the pelting storm of bullets, the charging line swept 
swiftly onward. The *' Tigers " were born soldiers 
and veterans of half a dozen fields; encouraging each 
other and closing up the gaps in their lines, they 
pressed forward until, sorely shattered but still for- 
midable in numbers and full of fight, they rushed right 
in among the Union guns. Weidrich's battery was 
overrun in an instant, but the men of Ricketts's battery 
were veterans and stood manfully by their pieces. 
Muskets, sponge-staffs, rammers, fence-rails, and 
stones were all used by the artillerists with good effect. 
" The batteries were penetrated," says Doubleday, 



486 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

" but would not surrender. Dearer than life itself 
to the cannoneer is the gun he serves, and these brave 
men fought hand-to-hand with handspikes, rammers, 
staves, and even stones. They shouted, ' Death on 
the soil of our native State rather than lose our 
guns ! ' " 

With all their gallantry the Union artillerists could 
not long have maintained themselves against the fu- 
rious onslaught of their foes, who came on in over- 
whelming numbers. But the Louisiana men were not 
destined to reap the full reward of their dashing 
charge. The noise of the conflict coming to the ears 
of Hancock, he sent a fresh brigade to the scene, 
which arrived just as the Federal resistance began to 
grow feeble. At the same moment Stevens's battery 
opened fire with canister upon the unprotected Con- 
federate left. While the Federal resistance thus 
gained in vigor and effectiveness, there came no re- 
enforcements to the aid of the Confederates. Dis- 
heartened, maimed, and bleeding they fell back over 
the ground they had so dashingly carried. Of the 
1,750 Louisiana Tigers who went with brave hearts 
and tense nerves into the fight only 150 returned. 

There had been fighting continuously all along the 
line all day. General Barksdale, on the Confederate 
side, was killed. General Sickles, of the Federals, 
was struck by a shot that carried away his leg. 
Meade, exposing himself more than than is customary 
or wise for a commanding general, had his horse shot 
under him. It was dark when the battle ended. 
Nearly forty thousand men were then lying dead or 
wounded upon the battle field. The survivors were 
huddling about their flickering campfires, pacing their 
lonely picket lines, or eating with scant relish their 
frugal rations. All knew that in but a few hours the 
fighting would begin again. No decisive advantage 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 487 

had come to either Meade or Lee from the day's 
battle. The Confederates had gained much, but the 
Federals still held the positions the continued pos- 
session of which meant victory. The two Round Tops 
and Cemetery Ridge were still in the hands of the men 
in blue. Until Lee could wrest from them the mastery 
of this line of defence, all his successes on the field of 
Gettysburg were worthless. 

That night the corps commanders of the Army of 
the Potomac held a council of war on the question 
whether to hold their ground or retreat. All voted 
to stay and fight it out. Lee held no council of war. 

Toward morning Longstreet came to urge again 
that the direct attack should be abandoned and an 
attempt made to move around Meade's left flank. 

" No," said Lee, " I am going to take them where 
they are on Cemetery Hill. I want you to take 
Pickett's division and make the attack. I will reenforce 
you by two divisions of the Third Corps." 

" That will give me fifteen thousand men," re- 
sponded Longstreet. " I have been a soldier, I may 
say, from the ranks up to the position I now hold. 
I have been in pretty much all kinds of skirmishes 
from those of two or three soldiers up to those of 
an army corps, and I think I can safely say there 
never was a body of fifteen thousand men who 
could make that attack successfully." 

But Longstreet's counsel went unheeded. 

During the fighting that followed he permitted his 
disapproval of his chief's tactics to be only too ap- 
parent, and history asks whether because of that dis- 
approval he was guilty of indifference or negligence 
which led to the final Confederate disaster. 

No adequate description of the battle of Gettys- 
burg can be given in a single chapter. Books have 
been written about it without exhausting the possibil- 



488 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ities it offers for description and discussion. But on 
the third day the vital point of the whole struggle was 
the fight for Cemetery Hill. Along the two lines 
stretching over miles of hill and vale, forest and 
meadow, orchards and fields of waving grain, there 
was fighting at almost every yard. But where the guns 
perched on the crest of Cemetery Hill were roaring 
and where Pickett's glorious line shouted the *' rebel 
yell " across a field sown thick with dead, the chief 
interest of that historic day centres. 

All night the Confederates had been posting guns 
to bear upon the Union lines until by morn Meade's 
officers looking through their field-glasses could see 
cannon covering them from every hill. One hundred 
and thirty-eight guns the Confederates had In posi- 
tion. The Federals had seventy-seven with which to 
reply. They knew well that Lee's plan was to pound 
their batteries into silence and then charge in over- 
whelming force. The Confederate troops were even 
then massing for the attack. 

Two guns fired by the Washington Artillery were 
to give the signal for opening fire. It was i rjo P. M. 
when a courier from General Longstreet came gallop- 
ing to where the Washington Artillery was stationed 
In the famous peach orchard, with a note: "Let the 
batteries open," It said; "order great care and pre- 
cision in firing." Instantly the word was passed to 
the gunners, and the two signal guns boomed out. 
Both pieces had been carefully trained on a Union 
battery some thousand yards away, and the shot from 
each exploded a caisson in that battery. The echoes 
had scarcely time to die away before all the Confed- 
erate guns burst into full cry. The din was deafen- 
ing. The concussions shook the earth as though the 
hidden forces of nature were struggling beneath its 
surface. The air was full of flying missiles. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 489 

*' Every size and form of shell known to British and 
to American gunnery shrieked, whirled, moaned, and 
whistled and wrathfully fluttered over our ground," 
wrote Samuel Wilkeson. " As many as six in a 
second, constantly two in a second, bursting and 
screaming over and around headquarters, made a very 
hell of fire that amazed the oldest officers. They 
burst in the yard — burst next to the fence, on both 
sides garnished as usual with hitched horses of aides 
and orderlies. The fastened animals reared and 
plunged with terror. Then one fell and then another 
— sixteen lay dead and mangled before the firing 
ceased, still fastened by their halters. These brute 
victims of a cruel war touched all hearts. ... A 
shell tore up the little step at the headquarters cottage 
and ripped bags of oats as with a knife. Another 
carried off one of its two pillars. Soon a spherical 
case burst opposite the open door. Another ripped 
through the low garret; shells through the two lower 
rooms; a shell in the chimney that fortunately did not 
explode; shells in the yard; the air thicker and fuller 
with the howling and whirring of these infernal 
missiles." 

From this heavy fire the Union batteries suffered 
severely. No less than eleven caissons were blown 
up, and the explosions cost many lives. General 
Meade, too, was forced to abandon his headquarters 
and seek a more protected spot. But the Union in- 
fantry was all well sheltered, and though the Confed- 
erate guns maintained a rapid fire, the Union line of 
defence was not seriously weakened. 

While the cannonade was progressing the Confed- 
erates were making ready for the charge. General 
Lee remained at headquarters. He had issued his 
orders for the direction of the battle. There now 
remained nothing for him to do but to stay where he 



490 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

could be found readily by couriers bringing reports 
of the progress of the battle. General Longstreet, 
to whom the immediate direction of the charge fell, 
did not like the plan. Ever since the battle opened, 
two days earlier, he had opposed Lee's ideas, and 
urged fighting a defensive battle only. Now that the 
time had come to order a desperate charge — to send 
fifteen thousand men across a broad plain and up a 
slope raked by the crossfire of a long line of hostile 
cannon — he was fearful and apprehensive of disaster. 

But while Longstreet and Alexander doubted the 
possibility of a successful charge across that shot- 
swept valley, other Confederate officers were more 
sanguine. " Pickett seemed glad to have the chance," 
writes a soldier who was with him that day. And 
General Wright, whose mettle was tested on the second 
day of the battle, responded to General Alexander's 
doubts as to whether the ridge could be won: " It Is 
not so hard to go there as it looks; I was nearly there 
with -my brigade yesterday. The trouble is to stay 
there. The whole Yankee army is there in a bunch." 

Alexander was somewhat encouraged. " When 
our artillery fire is at its best I shall order Pickett to 
charge," he wrote to Longstreet. 

Let us allow General Alexander himself to tell the 
story of what followed: "Before the cannonade 
opened I had made up my mind to give Pickett the 
order to advance within fifteen or twenty minutes 
after it began," he writes. " But when I looked at 
the full development of the enemy's batteries and 
knew that his Infantry was generally protected from 
our fire by stone-walls and swells of the ground, I 
could not bring myself to give the word. It seemed 
madness to launch Infantry Into that fire, with nearly 
three-quarters of a mile to go at mid-day under a July 
sun. I let the fifteen minutes pass, and twenty and 




Underwood & Undorwoc.d, N. Y. 

MORTAR BATTERY IN ACTION 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 491 

twenty-five, hoping vainly for something to turn up. 
Then I wrote Pickett: 'If you are coming at all 
you must come at once, or I cannot give you proper 
support; but the enemy's fire has not slackened at all; 
at least eighteen guns are still firing from the cemetery 
itself.' Five minutes after sending that message the 
enemy's fire suddenly began to slacken, and the guns 
in the cemetery limbered up and vacated the position. 

*' We Confederates often did such things as that 
to save our ammunition for use against infantry, but 
I had never before seen the Federals withdraw their 
guns simply to save them up for the infantry fight. 
So I said, ' if he does not run fresh batteries in there 
in five minutes this is our fight.' I looked anxiously 
with my glass, and the five minutes passed without a 
sign of life on the deserted position, still swept by our 
fire and littered with dead men and horses, and frag- 
ments of disabled carriages. Then I wrote Pickett 
urgently: 'For God's sake, come quick! The eigh- 
teen guns are gone; come quick or my ammunition won't 
let me support you properly.' " 

Pickett carried Alexander's note to Longstreet, who 
read it and said nothing. 

"Shall I advance, sir?" asked Pickett. 

Still dreading to order so desperate a charge, still 
convinced of its futility, Longstreet made no verbal 
answer, but merely bowed in token of assent. 

" I am going to move forward, sir," said Pickett 
proudly, and then rode back to his troops, that were 
soon put in motion. Longstreet rode after him and 
was soon at General Alexander's side. " I don't 
want to make this attack," he said. " I would stop 
it now but that General Lee ordered it and expects that 
it should go on. I don't see how it can succeed." 

While the two officers were speaking, the long line 
of gray-clad men swept grandly out from the shelter 



492 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of the trees and pushed out upon the open hill-side. 
"There they come! There comes the infantry!" 
cried the soldiers in the Union lines opposite. The 
magnificence of the spectacle impressed all beholders. 
Even those who were about to feel the shock of those 
advancing gray lines were thrilled with admiration for 
the valor which animated the men who marched with 
Pickett. This is how the scene is described by a lieu- 
tenant-colonel of Ohio volunteers : 

They moved up splendidly, deploying into column as they crossed 
the long sloping interval between the Second Corps and their base. 
At first it looked as though their line of march would sweep our 
position, but as they advanced their direction lay considerably to 
our left ; but soon a strong line with flags directed its march imme- 
diately upon us. . . . We changed our front, and taking position 
by a fence facing the left flank of the advancing column of rebels, 
the men were ordered to fire into their flank at will. Hardly a 
musket had been fired at this time. The front of the column was 
nearly up the slope and within a few yards of the line of the 
Second Corps' front and its batteries, when suddenly a terrific fire 
from every available gun from the Cemetery to Round Top Moun- 
tain burst upon them. The distinct, graceful lines of the rebels 
underwent an instantaneous transformation. They were at once 
enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke and dust. Arms, heads, 
blankets, guns and knapsacks were thrown and tossed into the clear 
air. Their track as they advanced was strewn with dead and 
wounded. A moan went up from the field, distinctly to be heard 
amid the storm of battle ; but on they went, too much enveloped in 
smoke and dust now to permit us to distinguish their lines or 
movements, for the mass appeared more like a cloud of moving 
smoke and dust, than a column of troops. Still it advanced amid 
the now deafening roar of artillery and storm of battle. Suddenly 
the column gave way; the sloping landscape appeared covered all 
at once with the scattered and retreating foe. A withering sheet of 
missiles swept after them, and they were torn and tossed and pros- 
trated as they ran. It seemed as if not one would escape. Of all 
the mounted officers who rode so grandly in the advance, not one 
was to be seen on the field; all had gone down. 

Meantime from the Confederate lines General 
Longstreet was watching the charge. " That day at 
Gettysburg was one of the saddest of my life," he 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 493 

writes. " I foresaw what my men would meet, and 
would gladly have given up my position rather than 
share in the responsibilities of that day. It was thus 
I felt when Pickett at the head of 4,900 brave 
men marched over the crest of Seminary Ridge and 
began his descent of the slope. As he passed me he 
rode gracefully with his jaunty cap raked well over 
his right ear and his long auburn locks, nicely dressed, 
hanging almost to his shoulders. He seemed rather 
a holiday soldier than a general at the head of a 
column which was about to make one of the grandest, 
most desperate assaults recorded in the annals of 
wars. Armistead and Garnett, two of his brigadiers, 
were veterans of nearly a quarter of a century's serv- 
ice. Their minds seemed absorbed in the men behind 
and in the bloody work before them. Kemper, the 
other brigadier, was younger, but had experienced 
many severe battles. He was leading my old brigade 
that I had drilled on Manassas plains before the first 
battle on that noted field. The troops advanced in 
well-closed ranks, and with elastic step, their faces 
lighted with hope. Before them lay the ground over 
which they were to pass to the point of attack. In- 
tervening were several fences, a field of corn, a little 
swale running through it, and then a rise from that 
point to the Federal stronghold. As soon as Pickett 
passed the crest of the hill, the Federals had a clear 
view and opened their batteries, and as he descended 
the slope of the ridge his troops received a fearful 
fire from the batteries in front and from Round Top. 
The troops marched steadily, taking the fire with 
great coolness. As soon as they passed my batteries 
I ordered my artillery to turn their fire against the 
batteries on our right, then raking our lines. They 
did so, but did not force the Federals to change the 
direction of their fire and relieve our infantry. As 



494 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the troops were about to cross the swale I noticed a 
considerable force of Federal infantry moving down 
as though to flank the left of our line. I sent an offi- 
cer to caution the division commanders to guard 
against that move, at the same time sending another 
staff oflicer with similar orders, so as to feel assured 
the orders would be delivered. Both officers came 
back bringing their saddles, their horses having been 
shot under them. After crossing the swale, the troops 
kept up the same steady step, but met a dreadful fire 
at the hands of the Federal sharpshooters; and as 
soon as the field was open the Federal infantry poured 
down a terrific fire, which was kept up during the 
entire assault. The slaughter was terrible, the en- 
filade fire of the batteries on Round Top being very 
destructive. At times one shell would knock down 
five or six men. As Pickett's division concentrated in 
making the final assault, Kemper fell severely 
wounded. As the division threw itself against the 
Federal lines, Garnett fell and expired. The Confed- 
erate flag was planted in the Federal line, and im- 
mediately Armistead fell, mortally wounded, at the 
feet of the Federal soldiers. The wavering divisions 
then seemed appalled, broke their ranks, and retired. 
Immediately the Federals swarmed around Pickett, 
attacking on all sides, enveloped and broke up his com- 
mand, having killed and wounded more than two 
thousand men in about thirty minutes. They then 
drove the fragments back upon our lines. As they 
came back I fully expected to see Meade ride to the 
front and lead his forces to an immense counter- 
charge. Sending my staff officers to assist in collect- 
ing the fragments of my command, I rode to my line 
of batteries, knowing they were all I had in front 
of the impending attack, resolved to drive it back or 
sacrifice my last gun and man. The Federals were 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 495 

advancing a line of skirmishers which I thought was 
the advance of their charge. As soon as the line of 
skirmishers came within reach of our guns the bat- 
teries opened again, and their fire seemed to check 
at once the threatened advance. After keeping it up 
a few minutes the line of skirmishers disappeared, and 
my mind was relieved of the apprehension that Meade 
was going to follow us." 

Colonel Fremantle, an officer of the British army, 
had attached himself to Lee's headquarters with a 
view to seeing some fighting. He has recorded in 
entertaining fashion some incidents of the great charge. 

" When I got close up to General Longstreet," he 
writes, " I saw one of his regiments advancing through 
the woods in good order; so, thinking I was just in 
time to see the attack, I remarked to the general that 
I wouldn't have missed this for anything. Longstreet 
was seated at the top of a snake fence and looking 
perfectly calm and unperturbed. He replied, laugh- 
ing: 'The devil you wouldn't! I would like to 
have missed it very much. We have attacked and 
been repulsed. Look there!' For the first time I 
then had a view of the open space between the two 
positions, and saw it covered with Confederates slowly 
and sulkily returning toward us under a heavy fire of 
artillery. 

" The general was making the best arrangements 
in his power to resist the threatened advance, by ad- 
vancing some artillery, rallying some stragglers, etc. 
I remember seeing a general (Pettigrew I think it 
was) come up to him and report that he was unable 
to bring his men up again. Longstreet turned upon 
him and replied with some sarcasm: 'Very well; 
never mind then. General; just let them remain where 
they are; the enemy's going to advance and will spare 
you the trouble.' 



496 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

*' Soon afterward I joined General Lee, who had 
in the meantime come to the front on becoming aware 
of the disaster. If Longstreet's conduct was ad- 
mirable, that of General Lee was perfectly sublime. 
He was engaged in rallying and encouraging the 
broken troops, and was riding about a little in front 
of the wood, quite alone, the whole of his staff being 
engaged in a similar manner farther to the rear. His 
face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not 
show signs of the slightest disappointment, care, or 
annoyance, and he was addressing to every soldier he 
met a few words of encouragement, such as, ' All this 
will come right in the end; we'll talk it over after- 
ward; but in the meantime all good men must rally. 
We want all good and true men just now.' He spoke 
to all the wounded men that passed him, and the 
slightly wounded he exhorted to bind up their hurts 
and take up a musket in this emergency. Very few 
failed to answer his appeal; and I saw many badly 
wounded men take off their hats and cheer him. 

" He said to me : ' This has been a sad day for us, 
Colonel — a sad day; but we can't expect to always 
gain victories.' 

" Notwithstanding the misfortune which had so 
suddenly befallen him. General Lee seemed to observe 
everything, however trivial. When a mounted offi- 
cer began beating his horse for shying at the bursting 
of a shell, he called out: ' Don't whip him. Captain; 
don't whip him. I've got just such another foolish 
horse myself, and whipping does no good.' 

" I saw General Wilcox (an officer who wears a 
short round jacket and battered straw hat) come up 
to him and explain, almost crying, the state of his 
brigade. General Lee immediately shook hands with 
him, and said cheerfully: 'Never mind. General, — 
all this has been my fault; it is I that have lost this 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 497 

fight, and you must help me out of it in the best way 
you can.' " 

Pickett's charge was the sledge-hammer blow with 
which Lee had planned to crush the Union army. 
When it failed the whole plan of invasion fell to 
pieces, and one unprejudiced foreign historian has said 
that when Pickett's line crumbled away, Lee must 
have foreseen Appomattox. Whole volumes have 
been written to show just why Pickett failed. 
Whether Lee erred in refusing to entertain Long- 
street's suggestion that the Confederates should move 
around the Union flank and force Meade to take the 
offensive; whether Longstreet carried out Lee's orders 
with zeal and celerity, or whether it was to his indif- 
ference and dilatoriness that the failure of the great 
charge was due; whether the right troops were chosen 
to support Pickett — all these things have been the 
subject of endless controversy. Doubtless it is true 
that the charge was not ordered as early in the day 
as General Lee had intended. Some reason there is 
to believe that Longstreet was lacking in zeal both 
on the second and third days of the battle, and it 
was really on the second day that the Confederates 
lost the battle. An hour then would have decided 
the fate of the nation at Gettysburg. The key to 
the whole Federal position was Little Round Top, and 
it will be remembered that the Union troops secured 
that vitally important hilltop scarce five minutes be- 
fore the Confederates reached it. In a reply to Gen- 
eral Longstreet's criticisms upon General Lee's con- 
duct of the battle, published in " Battles and Leaders 
of the Civil War," Colonel William Allan of the Con- 
federate army says: "Had Longstreet attacked not 
later than 9 or 10 a. m., as Lee certainly expected, 
Sickles's and Hancock's corps would have been de- 
feated before part of the Fifth and Sixth corps ar- 



498 STORY OFOURARMY 

rived. Little Round Top (which, as it was, the Fifth 
corps barely managed to seize in time) would have 
fallen into Confederate possession; and even if nothing 
more had been done, this would have given the field 
to the Confederates, since the Federal line all the way 
to Cemetery Hill was untenable with Round Top in 
hostile hands." 

So ended in complete defeat for the Confederates, 
the battle of Gettysburg. With it ended Lee's hope for 
a successful invasion of Northern territory. It was more 
than a mere battle lost for the Confederacy. It was a 
more serious disaster than the mere failure of a cam- 
paign. Far away beyond the Atlantic England and 
France were waiting for some notable triumph of the 
Southern armies to afford them an excuse to recognize 
the Confederacy as one among the family of independ- 
ent nations. Success at Gettysburg would have meant 
much for the Confederacy. Failure meant the post- 
ponement of any possible European intervention, and 
perhaps meant that all hope of such intervention must 
be abandoned. Doubtless this thought came to Gen- 
eral Lee when he saw Pickett's men driven from the 
lodgment they had effected in the centre of the Union 
line. From General Imboden we learn of the heavy 
sadness that came upon the great Virginian when night 
brought time to reflect upon the disaster of the day. 

" When he arrived there was not even a sentinel 
on duty at his tent," writes General Imboden, telling 
of General Lee's return to headquarters at midnight. 
" and not one of his staff was awake. The moon 
was high in the clear sky, and the silent scene was 
unusually vivid. As he approached and saw us lying 
on the grass under a tree, he spoke, reined in his jaded 
horse, and essayed to dismount. The effort to do so 
betrayed so much physical exhaustion that I hurriedly 
rose and stepped forward to assist him, but before I 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 499 

reached his side he had succeeded in alighting, and 
threw his arm across the saddle to rest, and fixing his 
eyes upon the ground leaned in silence and almost 
motionless upon his equally weary horse — the two 
forming a striking and never-to-be-forgotten group. 
The moon shone full upon his massive features and 
revealed an expression of sadness I had never before 
seen upon his face. Awed by his appearance, I waited 
for him to speak, until the silence became embarrass- 
ing, when, to break it and change the silent current 
of his thoughts, I ventured to remark in a sympathetic 
tone and in allusion to his great fatigue: 

*' ' General, this has been a hard day upon you.' 
" He looked up and replied mournfully: 
" ' Yes, it has been a sad, sad day to us,' and im- 
mediately relapsed into his thoughtful mood and at- 
titude. Being unwilling again to intrude upon his reflec- 
tions I said no more. After perhaps a minute or two 
he suddenly straightened up to his full height, and turn- 
ing to me with more animation and excitement of 
manner than I had ever seen in him before, for he 
was a man of wonderful equanimity, he said in a voice 
tremulous with emotion: 

" ' I never saw troops behave more magnificently 
than Pickett's division of Virginians did to-day in that 
grand charge upon the enemy. And if they had been 
supported as they were to have been, — but for some 
reason not yet fully explained to me, were not, — we 
would have held the position and the day would have 
been ours.' After a moment's pause he added in a 
loud voice, in a tone almost of agony: 'Too bad! 
Too bad! Oh! too bad!'" 

Though the ultimate results of the battle of Gettys- 
burg were greatly to the advantage of the Union, and 
though the battle was in every sense a notable defeat 
for the Confederates, the losses of the opposing 



500 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

armies were about equal. The official reports of the 
losses of Meade's army show that 3,072 men were 
killed, 14,497 wounded, and 5,434 captured; a total 
loss of 23,003. Lee's reports, which are somewhat 
fragmentary, show 2,592 killed, 12,709 wounded, and 
5,150 captured; a total of 20,451. There is much 
reason to believe, however, that the actual Confed- 
erate loss was largely in excess of that reported, and 
that it really exceeded the Union loss to no small 
degree. 

It is unnecessary for us to follow the course of 
Lee's army after the thunders of the battle about 
Cemetery Ridge were stilled. The Southern general 
recognized his defeat. He knew that the resources 
of his country would not justify him in any attempt 
to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by any 
desperate renewal of a hopeless contest. For him 
there was nothing left but retreat, and the night was 
scarcely half over before preparations for a move- 
ment back toward the Potomac were well under way. 
By the 5th of July his whole army was in full retreat. 



CHAPTER XXII 



Opening the Mississippi — Vicksburg Bars the Way — Grant's Cam- 
paign Against Pemberton — The Siege and Fall of Vicksburg — 
Its Effect : North and South. 

" The men of the Northwest," said John A. Logan 
in the early days of the war, " will hew their way 
to the Gulf." From the earliest days of the war the 
Union armies, and the river navy under Commodore 
Foote, were pushing southward from the Ohio River 
line, along the Mississippi and through the country 
east of it. As we have seen. Grant early became the 
leading figure in this advance of the Federals. We 
have seen how the navigation of the great river from 
the north blocked at Island No. lo, and New Madrid, 
was opened by the cannon of the Northern army and 
navy, while New Orleans and its supporting forts sur- 
rendered to Farragut. At two points along the Mis- 
sissippi its free navigation was still blocked in 1863 
— Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Below the latter 
point Farragut was master of the river, and above 
Vicksburg Foote's gunboats ruled supreme. 

The Port Hudson batteries were of importance to 
the Confederates because they blocked the Union fleet 
from access to the Red River down which came from 
a Confederate territory, as yet little vexed by war, 
vast stores of food and other supplies for the people 
in the more eastern states who were ruined by the 
marching armies that laid their fields destitute. The 
Vicksburg batteries guarded the mouth of this river 
from interference by Foote's squadron on the upper 
Mississippi. Recognizing the importance of these two 

501 



502 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

points, the Richmond authorities fortified them until 
they were impregnable from the river side and could 
bid defiance to any mere naval attack. 

In December, 1862, General Sherman with thirty 
thousand men landed near the mouth of the Yazoo 
River, just above Vicksburg, with the intention of at- 
tacking that town. He had expected the cooperation 
of Grant who was near Memphis and luka, but un- 
luckily for that commander a Confederate raiding 
force fell on his base of supplies at Holly Springs and 
so embarrassed him by the destruction they did that 
he could have no share in Sherman's expedition. As 
a result the Confederate General Pemberton was able 
to use all his troops against Sherman, and caught that 
officer in a trap at a point called Chickasaw Bayou, 
about twelve miles above the city. Sherman had 
under his command about thirty-two thousand men but 
the advantages of position were so great that the 
enemy, though outnumbered, easily beat back the Fed- 
eral storming column. 

" Our troops," wrote a Union ofllicer, " had not 
only to advance from the narrow apex of a triangle, 
whose short base of about four hundred yards and 
short sides bristled with the enemy's artillery and small 
arms, but had to wade the bayou and tug through the 
mucky and tangled swamp under a withering fire of 
grape, canister, shells, and minie balls before reaching 
dry ground. Such was the point chosen for the as- 
sault by General Sherman. What more could be de- 
sired by an enemy about to be assailed in his trenches! " 

In the attack the Federals lost heavily, and, after 
trying for two or three days to find a way around the 
Confederate position, Sherman retired. 

Late in January, 1863, General Grant took com- 
mand of the army before Vicksburg. The capture 
of that city was enjoined upon him by the War De- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 503 

partment, and the press of the country was clamoring 
for the fall of Richmond or the discharge of some 
generals. Nature had placed tremendous obstacles 
in the path of an attacking force and the Confederates 
had multiplied them prodigiously. 

*' The country," writes General Grant in his " Me- 
moirs," " is cut up by bayous filled from the river in 
high water — many of them navigable for steamers. 
All of them would be, except for overhanging trees, 
narrowness, and tortuous courses, making it impos- 
sible to turn the bends with vessels of any considerable 
length. Marching across this country in the face of 
an enemy was impossible; navigating it proved equally 
impracticable." 

The greater part of Grant's troops were on the 
western bank of the Mississippi above Vicksburg. 
His problem was to get them to solid dry land on the 
eastern bank within operating distance of the city. 
The obvious course was to take the army back to Mem- 
phis and with that as a base move by way of the rail- 
roads through Tennessee and northern Mississippi, 
then in control of the Union forces. Sherman ad- 
vised such a course but Grant feared it would at the 
outset look like another retreat and he would be sac- 
rificed to a disappointed press and people. So he 
tried several expedients before adopting the one which, 
though seeming the more audacious, brought success. 
In his " Memoirs " he says that he regarded these expe- 
dients as almost hopeless but pushed them partly to 
keep his troops busy, and partly to let the people of 
the North see that they were busy. 

Before Vicksburg the Mississippi River makes — or 
did make in 1863 — one of those mighty bends for 
which it is famous. For three miles its current flowed 
straight toward the city, then bending suddenly flowed 
straight away in an exactly opposite direction. The 



504 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

peninsula Inclosed between the almost parallel lines of 
the river was scarce a mile wide, and was lower than 
the river at high-water tide, and protected by levees. 
For the whole six miles of river included in this bend, a 
vessel going up or down stream was exposed to the 
fire of batteries which no transport could ever pass. 
The idea was suggested to Grant that by cutting a 
canal across this peninsula, the current of the river 
might pour into it and make a channel through which 
the boats might pass. Though not wholly out of 
range of the hostile batteries, this route would leave 
the boats exposed to fire for only a mile, and on a 
dark night so short a gauntlet might safely be run. 

Accordingly the work was begun. Four thousand 
men threw down sword and musket to take up the 
shovel. Steam dredges were set to work. The canal 
grew apace. But the enemy was not idle. He 
brought up his heaviest guns and turned them upon the 
toilers in the big ditch. His shells drove the work- 
men away and knocked the dredges to pieces. Finally 
a bursting shell cut the levee. The water quickly en- 
larged the gap so made, and rushing in flooded the 
whole peninsula so that Sherman's men came near 
being drowned by regiments. Thereafter that field 
of operations was abandoned. 

A new idea now came to Grant. The whole coun- 
try just west of Vicksburg was a maze of bayous, most 
of which were of sufficient depth to float a transport 
steamer. Might there not be then some connecting 
waterways which, with a little dredging, and a few 
canals cut, would give a continuous channel from a 
point above Vicksburg to the Red River, which in turn 
empties into the Mississippi River below the city? 

This experiment, too, was tried. Surveying parties 
explored the bayous with care. A possible route was 
discovered and carefully mapped. It was thought 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 505 

that by cutting the levee at Lake Providence, some 
seventy miles above Vicksburg, a water communication 
with the Red River might be had. This was accord- 
ingly done and the country was soon flooded. But 
the labor of sawing off the trunks of trees ten feet 
under water, and of dredging, was so great that Grant 
soon saw that there was no hope of completing this 
work with sufficient speed. So, although he allowed 
his soldiers to continue the work, he set about devising 
some other plan. 

It was to the eastern side of the river that the 
Union officers now directed their attention. It was 
useless to think of getting below Vicksburg on that 
bank, but the Yazoo River and the bayous connecting 
with it seemed to offer a route whereby a body of 
troops might be landed back of the city. Again le- 
vees were blown up and the current of the great river 
turned into the swamps and bayous. It was to the 
navy that the task of exploring this network of water- 
ways fell, and the work was undertaken by Commo- 
dore Porter with great intrepidity. The unusual spec- 
tacle of ironclads afloat in the forest; running at full 
speed into bridges and knocking them down; crawling 
through ditches with scarce a foot of leeway on either 
side, and generally deporting themselves like amphib- 
ious rather than purely marine monsters, was pre- 
sented to the astonished Confederates. But these in 
their turn were not wanting in activity. They threw 
up forts at commanding positions. They swept the 
decks of the gunboats with a constant storm of bullets. 
They felled trees before and behind the boats, filled 
the bayous with obstructions, and once had Porter so 
completely entrapped that only the timely and unex- 
pected arrival of Sherman with a small body of troops 
saved that gallant officer from the necessity of blow- 
ing up his whole flotilla. After the happy termination 



5o6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of that adventure, the gunboats sought deep water 
again and the search for Vicksburg's back door was 
abandoned. 

In the end, by building bridges and corduroy roads, 
Grant was able to march part of his force overland on 
the west side of the river, while the gunboats and 
transports ran down stream, past the much-dreaded 
batteries, without disaster, and by the 24th of April, he 
had two army corps and all his supplies concentrated 
at a point bearing the suggestive name of Hard Times. 
But this proved a poor place for crossing the mighty 
stream and a few days later the gunboats and trans- 
ports moved farther down, passing the heavy bat- 
teries at Grand Gulf. It is worth a passing note that 
at no time during the Civil War did the navy fail to 
pass land defences, however powerful and dreaded, 
when the effort was actually made. Farragut's as- 
cent of the Mississippi past Forts St. Philip and Jack- 
son was the most striking illustration, for he had the 
current and an enemy's fleet to cope with. 

On the 30th of April McClernand's force, about 
eighteen thousand men, crossed the river below Grand 
Gulf. McPherson soon followed him. The troops 
pushed forward defeating the enemy at Port Gibson, 
forcing him to abandon the great batteries at Grand 
Gulf, explode the magazines, and wreck the guns. 
Sherman moving down the west bank of the river 
crossed at Grand Gulf, and Grant then had about 
41,000 men. Pemberton, commanding the Confed- 
erates, had about 50,000, but his forces were widely 
dispersed, and about 18,000 men were tied up in 
Port Hudson besieged by Banks and Porter. Hal- 
leck had urged upon Grant the wisdom of cooper- 
ating with Banks, but the Union general, convinced 
that his true objective was Pemberton's scat- 
tered army, ignored the suggestions and pursued his 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 507 

own course. The time came when Grant had to dis- 
obey flatly an order from Halleck. In his " Memoirs " 
he says that in the midst of a battle in the outskirts of 
Vicksburg, an officer galloped up with an order that 
he drop the Vicksburg campaign altogether and go to 
the aid of Banks. " I told the officer who brought 
it," writes Grant, " that the order came too late and 
that Halleck would not give it now if he knew our 
position. The bearer of the dispatch insisted that I 
ought to obey the order, and was giving arguments 
to support his position, when I heard a great cheering 
to the right of our line, and looking in that direction, 
saw Lawler in his shirt-sleeves leading a charge upon 
the enemy. I immediately mounted my horse and 
rode in the direction of the charge and saw no more 
of the officer who delivered the dispatch — I think not 
even to this day." 

That charge in fact decided the issue of the day, 
and in success then and uniformly throughout the 
Vicksburg campaign Grant's flagrant disobedience of 
orders was forgotten. The whole campaign was a 
series of audacities for which, had he failed, military 
authorities would have condemned him utterly, but 
which, being successful, led on to the command of the 
Army of the Potomac, to the command of all the ar- 
mies, and to the Presidency of the United States. 
When he left Grand Gulf to thrust himself between 
the wings of Pemberton's widely separated army he 
did so against the pleadings of his friend and most 
trusted lieutenant, Sherman. " This road will be 
jammed as sure as life," argued Sherman pointing to 
the only highway over which the troops could march. 
It was, but Grant let his wagon trains lag, lived off the 
country, and took his troops through in time to pre- 
vent Pemberton's concentration. He forgot his com- 
munications and his base of supplies, as General Scott 



5o8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

did at Puebla, but he never forgot the enemy was his 
objective. At Grand Gulf, Raymond, Jackson, and 
Champion Hills, he beat the Confederates soundly. 
All the time it was Pemberton he was attacking, forc- 
ing him inexorably back upon Vicksburg. General 
Joseph E. Johnston was rushing from Tennessee to 
supersede Pemberton in command but could not come 
at him in his steady retreat. When the battle of Cham- 
pion Hills was fought and Pemberton was in full re- 
treat upon Vicksburg, Johnston telegraphed mournfully 
back to Richmond, " I am too late," while to Pem- 
berton he wired: 

If you are invested in Vicksburg you must ultimately surrender. 
Under such circumstances, instead of losing both troops and place 
we must, if possible, save the troops. If it is not too late, evacuate 
Vicksburg and its dependencies and march to the northeast. 

"Give up Vicksburg! Never!" exclaimed Pem- 
berton when he received this order. It was then 
probably too late for him to undertake the movement 
ordered by Johnston, for Grant was by this time closing 
in upon him. But Pemberton estimated the value of 
Vicksburg to the Confederacy too highly to think for 
a moment of evacuating the town. So he replied to 
Johnston : 

I intend to hold Vicksburg to the last. I conceive it to be the 
most important point in the Confederacy. 

Twenty-four hours later the last gap in the Union 
lines was filled up, and the Confederates were caught 
in a trap from which there was no escape, and into 
which no aid, no provisions, no munitions of war 
could find an entrance. 

It was a dejected entrance that the Confederates 
made to the town about to undergo a historic siege. 
This is the way that army looked to a woman who saw 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 509 

the weary and disheartened troops march in: "I never 
shall forget the woeful sight of a beaten, demoral- 
ized army that came rushing back. Wan, hollow- 
eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody, the men limped along, 
unarmed but followed by siege-guns, ambulances, gun- 
carriages and wagons in endless confusion." 

Grant might well have sat down and waited. Pem- 
berton was trapped — short of food, of percussion caps, 
and all the munitions of war. But there was danger 
that Johnston might come up and attack the Union 
rear. Grant further overestimated the Confederate 
despondency and thought that one determined rush 
would carry the defences of the city. It was tried on 
the afternoon of May 19th and failed. The Confed- 
erate spirit was more indomitable than Grant had 
thought. After a wait of three days he tried again 
and on the morning of the 22d, the Union army 
in three columns pressed forward to the as- 
sault. From the river came the roar of great guns 
as Porter's gunboats flung their huge shells into the 
city, where they burst, tearing up streets, wrecking 
houses, and carrying terror to the defenceless women 
and children. On the right of the Union line was 
Sherman's corps — tried veterans all. A desperate 
task was before them. High on a ridge in their front 
loomed up the " Graveyard Bastion," so called from 
its proximity to a cemetery. Before it the ground 
was rugged, rising into hillocks, sinking into gullies. 
A deep ditch was between the bastion and the Union 
troops. It must be bridged, but how? Volunteers 
were called for. One hundred and fifty men stepped 
out, and provided with timbers, boards, and tools, 
were to dash forward under the enemy's fire, and lay 
the bridge if the work could be done before the last 
of the builders should be shot dead. 

Ten o'clock had been set as the hour for the assault 



5IO STORY OF OUR ARMY 

to begin all along the line. All the watches of the 
division commanders were compared, that there might 
be no delay at any point. The hour drew near. The 
fury of the bombardment from the river, and the roar 
of the cannonade from all the field guns on Grant's 
lines gave Pemberton warning that an assault was to 
be made. Yet from all his works no gun spoke out 
in answer. He was hemmed in in Vicksburg with a 
scarcity of percussion caps. When he could get more 
he could not tell, so the order had been given prohibit- 
ing firing on the skirmish line and directing all artil- 
lerists to save their fire for moments of the direst need. 
So the Graveyard Bastion stood sullenly silent, 
seemingly empty, while the Federals formed before it 
for the assault. Ten o'clock had come. The Union 
batteries were pouring a rapid and concentrated fire 
upon the fort. The volunteers of the forlorn hope 
were running forward with timbers and boards in their 
hands. For a moment more there was no sign of the 
force and fury that was held pent behind those im- 
passive walls of clay. Then suddenly the whole bas- 
tion was ablaze. Fire and smoke leaped from the 
black muzzles of the cannon that peered from the 
embrasures. The parapet was black with riflemen, 
whose bullets whistled among the devoted soldiers be- 
low. There was no cessation in the Confederate fire. 
The rattle of the musketry and the deep boom of the 
cannon united in one continuous roar. Before this 
withering blast the assaulting column halted irreso- 
lute. Some of the men fell back. Others pressed on 
and threw themselves into the ditch before the ram- 
part, where they were safe from that terrible fire. 
A few daring ones scaled the bastion and planted the 
flag upon it, but were quickly shot down. There on 
the Confederate ramparts the Stars and Stripes waved 
grandly. The Confederates strove to seize the flag, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 511 

but were shot down by the Union men in the ditch. 
Throughout the day the flag waved proudly, riddled 
by the bullets of friend and foe alike, and surrounded 
by a heap of bodies clad in blue and gray. But it 
was only an empty sign of conquest, those colors float- 
ing over a hostile battlement, for the works could not 
be carried, and night left the Confederates in safe 
possession. 

At several points along the Confederate lines the 
Union colors were thus raised and left waving by 
color-guards who were shot down in their moment of 
triumph. The defenders could not tear down the 
flags without exposing themselves, and as a result 
General McClernand was led into an error which 
Grant in his report declared " resulted in the increase 
of our mortality list fully fifty per cent without ad- 
vancing our position or giving us other advantages." 
For after Grant had concluded that the assault was 
a failure, and was about to order its cessation, couriers 
from McClernand reported successes in his front and 
begged for aid. Accordingly an assault was ordered 
all along the line, only to be beaten back. McCler- 
nand's victories proved to have been without substance. 

In the day's work 35,000 Federals were engaged 
and their losses were more than 3,000. The Confed- 
erates had but 13,000 men in their trenches. 

The Union army now settled down to the task of 
reducing Vicksburg by the slow and tedious operations 
of a regular siege. The navy held the river and no 
aid could come to the imprisoned Confederates that 
way. On the landward side the whole town was in- 
vested by Grant's forces, which were within two hun- 
dred yards of the Confederate lines. No assistance 
from the outside world could reach Vicksburg, and as 
there were thirty thousand soldiers besides the normal 
population shut up in the city, Grant knew that he 



512 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

had only to be patient and his foes would be brought 
to terms by starvation. But he was too active a man 
to sit down and wait for hunger to do his work for 
him. He pressed his siege with as much energy as 
if there were danger of his foe escaping him. He 
gathered reenforcements from all parts of the West 
until his army numbered over seventy thousand men. 
He pressed the negroes of the surrounding country 
into service and set them to digging. The engineers 
laid out a system of regular approaches and diagonals, 
and the soldiers with pickaxes and shovels were set 
to work. It was hard work and tedious. Many 
hundred yards had to be dug in order to get ten yards 
nearer the enemy's line. But the soldiers were con- 
fident of victory and accepted the drudgery cheerfully. 
On top of the earth thrown from the trenches were 
piled sandbags with a little space between them. On 
the sandbags were laid logs. This made a wall higher 
than the soldiers' heads, pierced with loopholes for 
the sharpshooters to fire through. Behind this wall 
the sappers and miners worked in perfect safety, 
wheeling loads of dirt to the rear and carrying sap 
rollers, gabions, and fascines to the front, while all 
the time the Union sharpshooters kept a steady 
stream of lead whistling over the enemy's earthworks. 
Working day and night the Federals soon brought 
their lines close to the Confederate breastworks. At 
some points, scarce thirty feet separated them; at 
others, the same wall of clay that protected the gray 
against the blue, protected equally the blue against 
the gray. The Confederates were not idle. They 
impeded the Federal advance by all means in their 
power. Flaming wads of tow were fired from large- 
bore muskets into the Union sap-rollers and set them 
afire. The Federals promptly made new ones and 
kept them wet while in use. Hand grenades and shells 




^^o 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 513 

were tossed Into the nearest of the Union trenches 
and did great damage, though sometimes the Federal 
soldiers deftly caught them and tossed them back to 
explode within the Confederate lines. At one point 
the Federals had a screen of heavy timbers which re- 
sisted the shock of thirteen-inch shells. A barrel con- 
taining 125 pounds of gimpowder was rolled down 
upon It by the Confederates and touched off. The 
screen flew in all directions, and the air was filled with 
flying timbers. Then Grant's men began digging 
mines under the enemy's works, Intending to blow them 
up. Pemberton sank counter-mines to intercept them. 
The first mine touched off by the Federals buried six 
of the enemy alive In their counter-mine. The second 
mine was loaded with a ton of powder. When it ex- 
ploded, it blew to pieces a whole corner of a Confed- 
erate fort, sending timbers, guns, and men flying into 
the air. One negro was thrown over into the Union 
lines alive, literally blown out of slavery. Someone 
asked him how high he had been thrown. " Dunno, 
massa ; 'bout tree miles I t'ink," was his answer. When 
the mine exploded, the Federal storming party rushed 
into the crater only to find that the Confederates had 
a second line of defence in the rear, and that as yet 
no breach had been made in Pemberton's Impenetrable 
breastworks. 

The printing of its newspaper on wall paper was 
not the only evidence that the siege was bringing sore 
distress upon Vicksburg. The rations of Pemberton's 
soldiers had been cut down 75 per cent. " How do 
you like mule meat, Johnnie?" was the cheery way 
in which the blue-coats used to notify their gray-clad 
foes that they knew an unusual article of food was 
being served In Vicksburg. The citizens were starv- 
ing, mule steaks and dressed rats hung In the markets. 
The scarcity of provisions and the depreciation of 



514 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Confederate money made prices enormously high. 
The shells from the gunboats kept dropping in the 
streets of the city, driving the people to live in caves. 
With starvation in their homes and death in the streets, 
the plight of the people of Vicksburg was indeed 
gloomy. 

It became clear to Pemberton that approaching 
starvation, if nothing else, made surrender imperative. 
Negotiations were begun July 3d and Grant being 
true to his nickname and listening to nothing save 
" Unconditional Surrender " it was consummated on 
the 4th of July — the patriotic holiday giving to the 
triumph an added zest for the whole North. 

On the afternoon of the 4th, the formal ceremonies 
of the surrender were completed. " They marched 
out of their intrenchments by regiments upon the 
grassy declivity immediately outside their fort," writes 
a Union man who saw Pemberton's army lay down its 
arms. " They stacked their arms, hung their colors 
upon the centre, laid off their knapsacks, belts, cart- 
ridge boxes, and cap pouches, and thus shorn of the 
accoutrements of the soldier returned inside their 
works and thence down the Jackson road into the city. 
The men went through the ceremony with that down- 
cast look so touching on a soldier's face; not a word 
was spoken; there was none of that gay badinage we 
are so much accustomed to hear from the ranks of 
regiments marching through the streets; the few words 
of command necessary were given by their own offi- 
cers in that low tone of voice we hear used at funerals. 
Their arms were mostly muskets and rifles of superior 
excellence, and I saw but very few shotguns or indis- 
criminate weapons of any kind; it was plain that Pem- 
berton had a splendidly appointed army." 

More than anything else, except perhaps the battle 
of Gettysburg, the fall of Vicksburg discouraged and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 515 

disheartened the people of the Confederacy. It was 
a notable triumph for the North. It made the mili- 
tary reputation of America's greatest soldier. Only 
in the campaigns of Napoleon can the student of mili- 
tary science find equally brilliant results accomplished 
with an equal force. Nor had it been a costly cam- 
paign for the Federals. Scarce 10,000 men had 
been lost, and of this number many were but slightly 
wounded and soon resumed their places in the ranks. 
At such light cost Grant had wholly destroyed an 
army of 46,000 men, captured 60,000 small-arms and 
160 cannon, taken Vicksburg, and re-opened the Mis- 
sissippi River to navigation. 

For though Vicksburg was not the only Confederate 
stronghold on the banks of the great river, yet its 
fall ended Confederate domination over the stream. 
At Port Hudson the enemy had batteries scarcely less 
powerful than those which had so long held Grant in 
check at Vicksburg. Here a garrison of six thousand 
men was besieged by General Banks. The same tactics 
as those in force at Vicksburg were followed by Banks. 
Ever tightening his lines about the beleaguered town 
he drew his forces nearer and nearer to the Con- 
federate works, threatening an assault and rapidly 
bringing the besieged soldiers to the verge of starva- 
tion. When Vicksburg fell Banks caused salutes to be 
fired all along the line. The Confederate pickets asked 
what it meant, and were told the reason. As soon 
as he had satisfied himself of the truth of the report, 
General Gardner, who was in command, hoisted the 
white flag and surrendered upon the same terms as 
those granted at Vicksburg. 

Thus was the Mississippi opened and the Confed- 
eracy cut in two. The men of the Northwest had hewn 
their way to the Gulf. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Chickamauga Campaign — Bragg Driven from Chattanooga — 
His Attack on Rosecrans — Battle of Chickamauga — Grant in 
Command — Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. 

While Grant's guns were thundering away before 
VIcksburg, and while Lee and Meade were making 
those moves on the chessboard of war that ended in 
the decisive battle of Gettysburg, two other great 
armies were confronting each other in Tennessee, 
neither being anxious to move first. After the battle 
of Stone's River, which may fairly be called a drawn 
battle, the Confederate Army of the Tennessee under 
General Bragg, and the Union Army of the Cumber- 
land under General Rosecrans, remained intrenched 
near Murfreesboro for some time watching each 
other. Rosecrans thought that by keeping his army 
always ready to attack Bragg he would keep the Con- 
federate commander from sending any troops to the 
assistance of Pemberton at Vicksburg. Bragg, for 
his part, had concluded to adopt precisely similar tac- 
tics to prevent Rosecrans from sending any troops to 
Grant, and the two armies accordingly remained in- 
active until after Vicksburg had fallen, though they 
were but a few miles apart. Throughout the summer 
they marched and countermarched, threatened, made 
demonstrations, skirmished, and did everything ex- 
cept to meet in battle. There was a great deal of 
strategy, but, except for a few cavalry raids, very 
little fighting; so that Lee's trusty lieutenant, General 
D. H. Hill, who had been sent to take command of a 
corps in Bragg's army, was moved to say to a fellow- 
oflicer, *' When two armies confront each other in the 

516 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 517 

East, they get to work very soon, but here you look 
at one another for days and weeks at a time." 

" Oh, we out here have to crow and peck straws 
awhile before we use our spurs," was the laughing re- 
sponse. 

The battle of Stone's River was fought on the ist 
and 2d of January, 1863, and though the two armies 
were almost within sight of each other for the next 
eight months they did not again come to blows until 
the middle of September. In ;the meantime by a 
series of rapid marches and demonstrations, Rose- 
crans had succeeded in forcing his antagonists back 
step by step, until September found Bragg's army 
quartered in Chattanooga in the extreme southeast 
corner of the state. The Federal campaign was a 
brilliant one, and rightly won for General Rosecrans 
the favorable attention of students of military science, 
for with but a trivial loss to his own army, he had 
pushed a powerful adversary backward for hundreds 
of miles and had freed the greater part of the state of 
Tennessee from Confederate domination. 

But of all places in Tennessee, Chattanooga was 
the one which the National authorities least desired 
to see occupied by a Confederate force. Its geo- 
graphical position was commanding. It was the chief 
Southern gateway between the East and the West, 
and owing to that fact bears to-day the name, " The 
Gate City." Through Chattanooga passed the rail- 
roads that led from Vicksburg and Mobile to the 
chief towns of northern Mississippi, Tennessee, and 
Kentucky. With Chattanooga once in the hands of 
the Federals the Confederacy would be split in twain. 
No longer could the rich spoils of Tennessee farms 
be sent to feed the armies about Richmond. No 
longer could a brigade be put on the cars at Richmond 
and sent rumbling away to reenforce some threatened 



5i8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Confederate post in the West. Federal occupation 
of Chattanooga meant the shutting off of all commu- 
nication between the East and West. 

Accordingly, after driving Bragg into Chattanooga, 
Rosecrans began manoeuvring to drive him out. His 
operations to this end were skilful, patient, and toil- 
some. Perhaps they were more elaborate than was 
needful, Bragg would have liked to hold Chattanooga 
but his army was of greater Importance to the Con- 
federacy than was the city. An official authority on 
military tactics says: " VIcksburg, Metz, Paris, Plevna, 
Santiago, Port Arthur, all point to the lesson that an 
army which takes refuge in a fortified place and stays 
there to be besieged will be lost." Bragg, a skilful 
commander, had no intention of courting this fate. 
But he had no purpose of withdrawing without strik- 
ing a blow. As soon as Rosecrans, crossing the river, 
menaced Chattanooga, the Confederates abandoned 
the town, and did so with such precpitancy as to de- 
lude their foe into extending his own lines and weak- 
ening his position through over-confidence. 

Thus when on September 9, Crittenden entered 
Chattanooga, McCook was on the crest of the Look- 
out Range, forty-six miles south, while Thomas was 
twenty miles below McCook on the same range. This 
was a situation which would have given the Union 
commander much uneasiness had he not confidently 
believed that Bragg 'was retreating in all possible 
haste without intending to strike a blow. This belief 
was carefully fostered by Bragg, who sent into Rose- 
crans's lines soldiers, pretending to be deserters, who 
told doleful tales of the panic in Bragg's army and 
the disorderly haste with which the retreat was being 
conducted. Moreover, the Union war authorities 
at Washington were in complete ignorance of the 
movements of Bragg's army, and were sending to 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 519 

Rosecrans dispatches which increased his confidence 
in the theory that his adversary was in full retreat. 
As late as September 11, General Halleck telegraphed, 
" It is reported here by deserters that a part of 
Bragg's army is reenforcing Lee." Instead of this 
being the case, however, a part of Lee's army was re- 
enforcing Bragg, for at that very moment a large 
portion of Longstreet's famous corps was on the cars 
and speeding away toward Chattanooga. 

In fact, Bragg was not retreating. He had shifted 
his position just enough to inspire Rosecrans with a 
dangerous confidence, and was now rapidly concentrat- 
ing his army again with a view to falling upon the 
scattered Union divisions and crushing them one by 
one. That he failed in so doing seems to have been 
due to faulty organization in his army. He laid the 
blame bitterly on his subordinates, notably General 
Polk, but one can hardly feel that so many instances 
of orders not delivered or misconstrued as he cites 
could have occurred in a well-disciplined army. It 
was unfortunately the fact that Bragg did not inspire 
enthusiasm or devotion among his lieutenants. He 
was infirm of temper, petulant, irascible, and intoler- 
ant of advice. For example, when General Long- 
street reported to him some highly important and cor- 
rect information concerning the whereabouts of the 
Federals, obtained in a reconnoissance by Colonel 
Baylor, the Confederate commander exclaimed petu- 
lantly, " Colonel Baylor lies. There is not a Union 
infantry soldier south of us." And to this opinion 
he obstinately adhered until it was too late to prevent 
the concentration of Rosecrans's army. 

After a period of intense anxiety owing to the 
dispersed state of his army, and after repeated narrow 
escapes from its defeat in detail by the Confederates, 
General Rosecrans finally had the satisfaction of con- 



520 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

centrating his entire force along the bank of Chicka- 
mauga Creek — " River of Death " is the literal mean- 
ing of the harsh Indian name by which that stream is 
known. 

From the summit of Pigeon Mountain beyond the 
Chickamauga, Bragg's scouts looked down upon the 
Federal brigades swinging into line. The Confed- 
erate commander himself was there, availing himself 
of the opportunity afforded to study the exact dispo- 
sitions of his foe. If Bragg felt any chagrin at see- 
ing thus concentrated before him an army which he 
might have dismembered he gave no expression to 
this thought. Heavy reenforcements had come to 
him during the day and now with seventy thousand 
men to fifty-five thousand Federals he felt confident 
that he could crush his foe. 

The plan of battle chosen by General Bragg was sub- 
stantially the same as that adopted by him at Stone's 
River. While holding Rosecrans's attention by dem- 
onstrations all along the line, he purposed to concen- 
trate his main attack on the Federal left, crushing that 
by force of men and metal, and swinging the Federals 
around as on a pivot. Unluckily for the success of 
his plan he put General (and Bishop) Polk in com- 
mand of his right wing, while the Federal left was 
under the command of Genera) Thomas, who proved 
more than a match for his clerical antagonist. 

Morning dawned. The gray light of early dawn 
brightened into the rosy flush of the sunrise. The hum 
of voices and the rumbling of wagons arose from both 
the hostile camps, but there came no sound of battle 
from Polk's position, and Bragg paced up and down 
before his headquarters impatiently listening for the 
boom of the cannon that should tell him that Polk had 
gone into action. A staff officer sent to hasten the 
. clerical general brought back the disappointing mes- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 521 

sage: "Please inform the general commanding that 
I have already ordered General Hill Into action; that 
I am waiting for him to begin; and do please say to 
General Bragg that my heart Is overflowing with anxi- 
ety for the attack." Bragg then galloped off in per- 
son to find Hill. It was eight o'clock when this officer 
was found. His troops were leisurely breakfasting 
around their campfires. 

" Why have you not begun the attack? " asked 
Bragg with some indignation. 

" I have received no order to that effect," responded 
Hill with surprise. 

" I found Polk after sunrise sitting down reading 
a newspaper at Alexander's bridge, two miles from 
the line of battle where he ought to have been fight- 
ing," continued Bragg hotly. His orders had mis- 
carried, and as usual he was Inclined to charge his 
oflicers with flagrant neglect of duty In not having 
obeyed orders that they had not received. 

However, with Bragg's arrival the battle opened. 
The Federals were at first driven back, but Thomas, 
a sturdy fighter, checked the retreat and behind a 
barrier of logs and earthworks held his enemy at bay. 
To succor him Rosecrans sent several divisions, thus 
weakening the right of his line. Perceiving this, Long- 
street began to hammer at that point. Rosecrans 
thereupon sent General Wood to oppose Longstreet 
with these orders: " The general commanding directs 
that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible and 
that you support him." The order was self-contra- 
dictory. To " close up " means to take a position 
beside another body of troops so as to form one con- 
tinuous line; to "support" means to take position In 
the rear of the latter. Wood chose to do the latter, 
and Longstreet seeing the flank of Reynolds's line 
unprotected sent his troops against it. 



522 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

His success was immediate. The troops he em- 
ployed were veterans of the Virginia campaigns and 
they rushed in as if eager to show their brethren of 
the West how men who had been with Jackson and 
with Lee could fight. They rolled back the Union 
defence killing in their attack the " poet soldier," 
General Lytle, author of the well-known lines be- 
ginning, 

I am dying, Egypt, dying; 
Ebbs the crimson life tide fast. 

This, then, was the situation after Wood's fatal 
blunder: On the left of the Union line Thomas, hold- 
ing his line gallantly; his men in the breastworks that 
made a semicircle about the crest of Snodgrass Hill; 
the enemy to his right, left, and in his front. On the 
far right of the Union line were Sheridan and Davis 
with five fresh brigades cut off from all communication 
with Thomas and practically useless for further em- 
ployment against the enemy. In the centre where the 
line had been pierced, was a motley throng of disorgan- 
ized infantrymen, teamsters, and camp-followers, all 
rushing to the rear. The Dry Valley road that led 
to Rossville, where the Union reserves were posted, 
was thronged with wagons, empty caissons, ambu- 
lances, mounted men and men on foot, all with one 
thought and one purpose, to escape from the field 
of battle. In this torrent of fugitives Rosecrans was 
caught. He had made an attempt to reach Thomas, 
but found his progress in that direction blocked by 
the enemy, and was now drifting with the tide toward 
Rossville. With him was his chief of staff, James 
A. Garfield, many years afterward President of the 
United States. 

The information volunteered by the stragglers was 
not encouraging. " The entire army is defeated and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 523 

is retreating to Chattanooga," said one; " Rosecrans 
and Thomas have both been Icilled, and McCoolc and 
Crittenden are prisoners," declared another. From 
the mass of true and false reports Rosecrans sifted 
the one fact that most of the disorderly fugitives were 
from Negley's division, and that the division had 
been cut to pieces. As Negley had been sent to reen- 
force Thomas, Rosecrans reasoned that disaster to 
Negley meant disaster to Thomas, and accordingly 
concluded that the left wing had been crushed like 
the right. Believing then that his army had sustained 
a complete defeat, Rosecrans hastened tO' Chatta- 
nooga, in order to be there to meet and rally the dis- 
organized troops of fugitives that were making for 
that place. 

General Garfield, however, did not feel satisfied 
with the information gleaned. He wanted to go and 
find Thomas, and receiving permission from Rose- 
crans set out. Evading the Confederates by whom 
Thomas was nearly surrounded, he soon stood at that 
general's side. He found him stubbornly holding 
his ground after a bloody contest which had resulted 
in holding for the Federal arms the spot which was 
the key to the whole battle field. 

Help came from an unexpected quarter. Over at 
Rossville was General Gordon Granger in command 
of the Union reserves. A soldier of fiery temper, he 
became restive at being kept in inactivity. When to the 
sound of the Sabbath church bells of Chattanooga 
there succeeded the heavy booming of the cannon 
along the line of battle. Granger grew impatient. 

" He walked up and down in front of his flag ner- 
vously pulling his beard." It is Granger's chief of 
staff who tells the story. " Once stopping he said, 

' Why the does Rosecrans keep me here? There 

is nothing in front of us now. There is the battle,' 



524 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

pointing in the direction of Thomas. Every moment 
the sounds of battle grew louder, while the many col- 
umns of dust rolling together were mingled with the 
smoke that hung over the scene. 

" At eleven o'clock, with Granger, I climbed a high 
hay-rick near by. We sat there for ten minutes listen- 
ing and watching. Then Granger jumped up, thrust 
his glass into its case and exclaimed with an oath, 
' I am going to Thomas, orders or no orders.' ' And 
if you go,' I replied, ' it may bring disaster to the 
army and you to a court-martial.' ' There's nothing 
in our front now but ragtag, bobtail cavalry,' he re- 
plied. ' Don't you see Bragg is piling his whole army 
on Thomas? I am going to his assistance.' " 

Very effective was the assistance brought by Granger. 
He found Thomas hard pressed and viewing a South- 
ern battery just wheeling into position against which 
he had no defence. " Can you carry that position? " 
he asked Granger eagerly. " Yes. My men are 
fresh and they are just the fellows for that work. 
They are raw troops and they don't know any better 
than to charge up there." The position was carried, 
the battery driven away and Thomas was saved. 
General Garfield came up a few moments later and, 
delighted to find Thomas still blocking the Confed- 
erate advance, sent word to Rosecrans to check the 
retreat. When Rosecrans received the dispatch far 
away in Chattanooga he leaped to his feet crying, 
" Thank God ! This is good enough. The day is 
not lost yet." Orders were sent swiftly in all direc- 
tions. Stragglers were halted, routed commands 
rallied and a new line formed at Rossville where 
the enemy was held in check until night. Then under 
cover of darkness the Federals slipped away and into 
Chattanooga — defeated but at least not beaten out 
of semblance to an army and still fit for resistance. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 525 

So ended the battle of Chickamauga. It had 
been a costly struggle for both armies. " Never 
have I known Federal troops to fight so well," 
wrote the Confederate General Hindman in his re- 
port, and he adds that he " never saw Confederate 
troops fight better." To the valor shown by both 
armies the long lists of the killed and wounded 
bear testimony. Rosecrans lost In all 16,336 men, 
of whom 1,687 were killed and 9,394 wounded. 
Bragg's loss was, killed, 2,673, wounded, 16,274, miss- 
ing, 2,003. 

The Federals were now the ones to face the peril 
of being cooped up in a city to face starvation. With 
the river behind them and the enemy before, their 
isolation was made the more complete by the autumn 
rains which converted the roads into quagmires in 
which wagons sunk up to the axles, and mules were 
mired and drowned so that the path was lined for 
miles with their dead bodies. On Lookout Mountain 
and Missionary Ridge, Bragg's men worked away at 
their trenches and looked down upon the town hun- 
dreds of yards below them thinking contentedly that 
starvation v/ould bring its garrison to terms. Indeed 
Rosecrans's army was eating up its rations quicker 
than they could be replaced. Meantime, Grant had 
been put in command of all the Union armies between 
the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. His first act 
was to supersede Rosecrans by Thomas and to tele- 
graph that commander, " You must hold Chatta- 
nooga at all hazards." 

" We will hold the town till we starve," answered 
the sturdy " Rock of Chickamauga." 

Grant's first task was to sweep the enemy away from 
the banks of the river at a point which would admit 
of sending supplies by boat to the town. This was 
•done and the Union soldiers, once more on full rations, 



526 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

cheered up amazingly. A little steamer made out 
of a flatboat and an old saw-mill engine brought the 
first fresh supplies. " It is hard for anyone not an 
eye-witness to realize the relief this brought," writes 
General Grant. " The men were soon re-clothed and 
well fed; an abundance of ammunition was brought 
up, and a cheerfulness prevailed not before enjoyed 
in many weeks. Neither officers nor men looked upon 
themselves any longer as doomed. The weak and 
languid appearance of the troops, so visible before, 
disappeared at once. I do not know what the effect 
was on the other side, but assume it must have been 
correspondingly depressing." 

For about a month a tacit truce existed between 
the two armies, broken only by an unavailing effort 
of the Confederates to break the " grub route " by 
which Grant was victualling the defenders. The lines 
were so near together that the pickets could exchange 
jests, and the music in one camp was plainly heard 
in the other. But there was no firing. 

One day General Grant rode down to the Union 
picket line. " Turn out the guard for the command- 
ing general," cried the first picket who saw him. 
" Never mind the guard," said Grant good-humoredly. 
But the Confederate pickets, too, had seen who the 
visitor was. " Turn out the guard for the command- 
ing general. General Grant," they cried, and in a 
moment a rank of gray-clad men faced Grant and 
gravely presented arms. He politely returned the 
salute and passed on. 

Grant, of course, did not intend to keep the army 
cooped up in Chattanooga indefinitely. It had to come 
out, but it must come as an attacking, not a retreating, 
force. Sherman with two army corps was on his 
way from Vicksburg and Grant only awaited his ar- 
rival to attack. Bragg should have known of Sher- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 527 

man's approach. Possibly he did. But he thought 
his lines impregnable and detached Longstreet's corps 
with about twenty thousand men, sending them off 
to drive Burnside away from the vicinity of Knox- 
ville. President Lincoln did not want Confederate 
troops among the loyal mountaineers of Eastern Ten- 
nessee and a peremptory order was sent to Grant 
to attack at once, thinking it might recall Long- 
street. The result of this order was the battles of 
Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, and Missionary 
Ridge. 

Bragg's lines surrounded Chattanooga on its land- 
ward side in the form of a huge semicircle, the ends 
resting on the Tennessee River on either side of the 
town. The Confederate right flank was at the point 
where Missionary Ridge slopes down to the river, 
the left flank was on the northern end of Lookout 
Mountain. Grant's plan of action was to wait until 
Sherman could come up with his full command, then 
have him cross the river at Missionary Ridge and 
make the main attack there, while Thomas in the 
centre and Hooker on the slope of Lookout Mountain 
should attack the enemy with just enough vigor to 
prevent any reenforcements being sent to the right 
flank. In the main this plan of action was adhered 
to, though as we shall see the enthusiasm and the 
gallantry of the troops under Hooker and Thomas 
made them really the heroes of the day, and so far 
from merely acting to divert Bragg's attention from 
Sherman they themselves won the greatest triumphs 
of the battle of Chattanooga. 

Shortly after noon on the 23d, those of the Con- 
federates who were in position to see saw the troops 
of Granger, Sheridan, and Wood forming in front 
of the town as if for a review. But those who thought 
it a mere military pageant were quickly undeceived, 



528 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

for the long blue line swept quickly forward, driving 
in the Confederate pickets and charging the rifle-pits. 
Though from all the hills around the Confederate 
cannon were roaring and flaming, the men in gray 
could not hold their ground. Before they could hurry 
forward more troops to the threatened point the line 
of fortifications hitherto held by them was in pos- 
session of the Federals. It took but little time to 
turn the earthworks to face the other way, and by 
night the Union line was well intrenched a mile in 
advance of the position held by it in the morning. 

That night Sherman's troops crossed the Tennessee 
and made a lodgment at the foot of Missionary Ridge. 
Their orders were to attack at daylight in the morn- 
ing. Over on the Union right, around the base of 
Lookout Mountain, were Hooker's troops. They 
too were to attack at daylight. All were brimful of 
enthusiasm and confident of success. 

Let us watch Hooker's attack first. It is daylight 
of a wet, chilly morning. A drizzling rain is falling. 
All the valley and the lower part of the mountain are 
shrouded in an impenetrable veil of fog that effec- 
tually shuts off all that is going on in the valley from 
the view of the Confederates on the heights. At four 
o'clock all is life and action in the Union camps. 
Hooker's men press forward, driving back the enemy's 
pickets and advance guard until Lookout Creek is 
reached. Here a serious check is encountered, for 
the creek is so swollen by the rain as to be impassable 
in the face of a hostile force. Hooker begins a 
bridge and at the same time sends Geary with two 
divisions up the stream to Wauhatchie, telling him to 
cross there and return down the other bank, taking 
the enemy in flank. The Confederates having all their 
attention fixed upon Hooker's bridge fail to notice 
Geary's movement, and he is soon attacking them 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 529 

In the flank, and rear and spreading panic In their 
ranks. By eleven o'clock Hooker's bridge Is finished, 
his corps has crossed and in conjunction with Geary 
is scaling the mountain side, beating back the enemy 
and driving them around the northern end of the 
mountain. The ground over which the Federals are 
advancing is rugged — a steep mountain side, covered 
with boulders, broken with crags, ravines, and rocky 
crests. To add to its difficulty the enemy had felled 
trees, over the trunks and through the tangled boughs 
of which the assailants have to force their way. Yet 
the courage and indomitable persistency of Hooker's 
men overcame all obstacles. The troops of the Con- 
federate General Stevenson fly before them. The 
Union batteries on neighboring hills and one across 
the river on Moccasin Point throw shells Into their 
disordered ranks. By two o'clock the Confederates 
have been driven from the northern slope of the 
mountain and are flying down Into Chattanooga val- 
ley. Then Hooker halts and fortifies his lines. He 
has discharged the task assigned him, and he has done 
more. Ordered to attack the enemy vigorously he 
has gone on and driven them from a position which, 
even after his success, looks to all military eyes im- 
pregnable. 

The fog that hangs over the mountain has hid 
Hooker's lines from the anxious eyes of the watchers 
in the town below. Now and then a break In the 
veil of mist gives a hasty glimpse of the fighting, but 
for the most part it is a " battle above the clouds." 
But when the morning of the day after the battle 
dawns bright and clear, the blue-coats in Chattanooga 
see floating from the topmost peak of Lookout Moun- 
tain the Stars and Stripes, and a cheer runs along the 
line of the whole army, for all know now that the 
backbone of Bragg's position is broken. 



530 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Meanwhile, on the Union left, Sherman is doing 
some hard fighting, and achieving notable results, 
though no success as marvellous as the taking of Look- 
out Mountain attends his efforts. He reaches the 
crest of the hill, advancing all the time in the face 
of a heavy infantry fire, and finds when he gets there 
that the enemy has retreated across a gully to another 
part of the ridge — Tunnel Hill they call it, because 
pierced to allow the passage of a railroad. Sherman 
colicludes to advance no farther to-day, so fortifies 
the position he has won, and sends tidings of his suc- 
cess to Grant. " Attack to-morrow at daylight," is 
the order Grant sends in return. 

The morning of the 25th comes. No rain or fog 
now. The sun rises bright so that the officers in 
Chattanooga can see with their field-glasses all parts 
of the battle field. Missionary Ridge is to be the 
scene of the fighting to-day. Yesterday Bragg's line 
reached from Missionary Ridge to Lookout Moun- 
tain. To-day he will make a desperate effort to hold 
the ridge alone. The advantage of numbers no 
longer rests with Bragg. He has but forty-seven 
thousand men left now. Grant has about eighty thou- 
sand, but not all these will be brought into action. 

Sherman attacked at sunrise advancing along the 
crest of Missionary Ridge in the face of the greater 
part of Bragg's army and making but little progress. 
By way of a diversion in his behalf Grant ordered sev- 
eral divisions, about twenty thousand men in all, for- 
ward to attack a line of works at the foot of the 
Ridge. They met a hot reception but carried all the 
trenches; and, his orders having been most admirably 
and fully carried out, the commanding general, watch- 
ing from the rear, expected to see the troops halt in 
the position thus won. To his amazement the line 
started in to climb the hill. General Fullerton, who 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 531 

stood by Grant's side that day, tells the story of the 
subsequent action in " Battles and Leaders of the 
Civil War " : 

As soon as Granger had replied to Thomas he turned to me, 
his chief of staff, and said : " Ride at once to Wood and then to 
Sheridan, and ask them if they ordered their men up the ridge, and 
tell them if they can take it to push ahead." As fast as my horse 
could carry me I rode first to General Wood and delivered the 
message. "I didn't order them up," said Wood; "they started up 
on their own account, and they are going up, too ! Tell Granger, 
if we are supported we will take and hold the ridge ! " As soon 
as I reached Wood, Captain Avery got to General Sheridan and 
delivered his message. " I didn't order them up," said Sheridan ; 
" but we are going to take the ridge ! " He then asked Avery for 
his flask and waved it at a group of Confederate officers, standing 
just in front of Bragg's headquarters, with the solutation " Here's 
at you ! " At once two guns in front of Bragg's headquarters were 
fired at Sheridan and the group of officers about him. One shell 
struck so near as to throw dirt on Sheridan and Avery. " Ah ! " 
said the general ; " that is ungenerous. I shall take those guns for 
that." 

The men, fighting and climbing up the steep hill, sought the 
roads, ravines, and less rugged parts. The ground was so broken 
that it was impossible to keep a regular line of battle. At times 
their movements were in shape like the flight of migratory birds — 
sometimes in line, sometimes in mass, mostly in V-shaped groups 
with the points toward the enemy. At these points the regimental 
colors were flying, sometimes drooping as the bearers were shot, but 
never reaching the ground, for other brave hands were there to 
seize them. Sixty flags were advancing up the hill. Bragg was 
hurrying large bodies of men from his right to the centre. They 
could be seen hastening along the ridge. Cheatham's division was 
being withdrawn from Sherman's front. Bragg and Hardee were 
at the centre, urging their men to stand firm, and drive back the 
advancing enemy now so near the summit — indeed so near that the 
guns, which could not be sufficiently depressed to reach them, be- 
came useless. Artillerymen were lighting the fuses of shells, and 
bowling them by hundreds down the hill. The critical moment 
arrived when the summit was just within reach. At six different 
points, and almost simultaneously, Sheridan's and Wood's divisions 
broke over the crest — Sheridan's first near Bragg's headquarters ; 
and in a few minutes Sheridan was beside the guns that had been 
fired at him, and claiming them as captures of his division. Baird's 
division took the works on Wood's left almost immediately after- 
ward ; and then Johnson came up on Sheridan's right. The enemy's 



532 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

guns were turned upon those who still remained in the works and 
soon all were in flight down the eastern slope. Baird got on the 
ridge just in time to change front and oppose a large body of the 
enemy moving down from Bragg's right to attack our left. After 
a sharp engagement that lasted till dark he drove the enemy back 
beyond a high point on the north which he at once occupied. 

The sun had not yet gone down, Missionary Ridge was ours, 
and Bragg's army was broken and in flight. Dead and wounded 
comrades lay thickly strewn on the ground ; but thicker yet were 
the dead and wounded men in gray. Then followed the wildest 
confusion as the victors gave vent to their joy. Some madly 
shouted; some wept from the very excess of joy; some grotesquely 
danced out their delight — even our wounded forgot their pain to 
join in the general hurrah. 

The victory of Missionary Ridge was a far-reach- 
ing triumph for the Union cause. It broke the Con- 
federate power west of the Alleghanies and, with the 
fall of Vicksburg, opened practically the whole 
western half of the Confederacy to the Union armies. 
It destroyed the lines of communication between the 
East and West by which the Confederates had been 
able to hurry troops back and forth between theatened 
points. For the campaign of which it was the cul- 
mination much credit is due to General Rosecrans, 
although the jealousy and pique of Secretary Stanton 
and General Halleck to whom he had written letters 
more soldierly than politic, had prevented his being 
" in at the death." More immediately, of course, the 
victory was due to Grant and it was the culmination 
of his series of victories in the West that marked him 
plainly as the man best fitted to cope with the military 
genius of Lee in Virginia. 

In all the battles around Chattanooga Grant had 
about 56,539 men and Bragg 40,929. For the im- 
portance of the actions the losses were not heavy. 
They were, Federals, 752 killed, 4,713 wounded, and 
350 missing; Confederates, 361 killed, 2,180 wounded, 
and 4,146 missing. Through the gateway those dead 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 533 

Federals had opened with their lives there poured 
such a stream of men in blue as to overflow the whole 
Southland from Atlanta to the sea, stamping out re- 
sistance to the Union and wrecking the Confederacy 
beyond repair. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Minor Operations East and West— Gillmore at Charleston— Sher- 
man at Meridian — The Massacre of Fort Pillow — The Red 
River Campaign — Colonel Bailey's Dam. 

Looking back after the lapse of half a century it 
is easy to see that the case of the South at the end 
of the year 1863 was already hopeless. But the South 
did not then see it; the North dared not hope it, and 
it took nearly two years more of savage fighting to 
convince the gallant Confederates of the failure of 
their cause. But the incoming of 1864 saw the Union 
authority firmly established in Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee; the Mississippi open from St. Louis to its 
mouth; every considerable Southern city except Rich- 
mond and Charleston in the hands of the Federals; 
the Atlantic and Gulf coasts controlled by them; Lee 
beaten back from Pennsylvania, and Stonewall Jack- 
son slain. 

Elements of weakness, other than purely military 
ones, were pressing the Confederacy to its doom. It 
had no navy and the armed ships of the Union block- 
aded its ports until the dearth of articles, usually im- 
ported, became intolerable. The South had never 
been a manufacturing section and this interruption to 
commerce forced the people into curious expedients 
to obtain cloth, shoes, china, metallic goods, medicines, 
and the like. There were no gold mines in the South; 
no way of getting gold coin except by shipping cotton 
to England in exchange for it, and the blockade made 
such shipments perilous. The paper money issued by 
the Confederate treasury became depreciated as the 

534 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 535 

chances of success grew less, until $1,400 would barely 
buy a barrel of flour; common cloth cost $60 a yard 
and shoes were from $600 to $800 a pair. To the 
scarcity of all articles of necessity was added a growing 
scarcity of men. Conscription for the army was so 
rigidly enforced that it not only swept the land clear 
of able-bodied men between 18 and 45 years of age, 
but enrolled boys of 16 and men of 60 in the home 
guard. The authorities, as General Grant said, 
*' robbed alike the cradle and the grave." 

At the same moment the North was enjoying un- 
paralleled prosperity. Trade was active, money 
plenty, and fortunes piled up as never before. The 
ports were open to a flood of immigrants and, as the 
practice of accepting substitutes was not discouraged 
by the authorities, no Northern man, even though 
drafted, was forced into the army if he had a few 
hundred dollars to pay for a substitute. 

But, despite this glaring inequality in resources, and 
the pitiful contrast between their state and that of 
their foes, the men of the South fought on. As the 
Union forces gradually swept through the West the 
great theatre of war converged upon Richmond, but 
there was fighting a-plenty at other points than around 
the Confederate capital. Indeed the winter of 
1863-64 brought to the sorely tried people of Virginia 
some measure of relief from the long strain of active 
war, for the two great armies rested quietly in their 
trenches awaiting the spring. 

Along the Atlantic coast there was some activity. 
The city of Charleston, where the first gun of the 
war had been fired, was a continuing offence, senti- 
mental and practical to the United States government. 
Not only was it the cradle of secession, but it was 
the favorite harbor for the blockade runners which 
slipped past the Union fleet outside and came to 



536 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

anchor under the guns of Fort Sumter with the regu- 
larity of ocean liners. Beauregard had fortified the 
harbor until it was almost impregnable to attack by 
either sea or land. Both Fort Sumter and Fort 
Wagner on the mainland had been made the targets 
of a furious naval cannonade in 1863 without serious 
injury when General Q. A. Gillmore, being appointed 
to command the Union forces about Charleston, de- 
termined to attack them from the land. 

The one bit of land on which guns of the type then 
employed could be efficiently used against Fort Sum- 
ter was Morris Island, a low sand bar forming the 
southern boundary of the harbor. This was occupied 
by the Confederate Fort Wagner. Gillmore there- 
upon began the erection of batteries on the neighbor- 
ing Folly Island that commanded Fort Wagner. This 
he did secretly under conditions of great difficulty, 
and succeeded in getting forty-eight heavy guns 
mounted in earthworks, concealed by the dense 
thickets, without the enemy becoming aware of their 
existence. On the 9th of July these batteries burst 
into flame, and supported by four monitors in the 
harbor pounded Fort Wagner savagely while a Union 
force landed on Morris Island, captured some Confed- 
erate outworks and turned their guns on the main fort. 
Two days later an assault was made but repulsed. 
A heavy cannonade from Union batteries and ships 
silenced the Confederate guns, and the storming party 
rushed forward to the attack. In the very van was 
the Massachusetts regiment of negroes led by the 
white colonel, Robert G. Shaw, who was struck down 
in the battle, and a noble memorial to whom by 
Augustus St. Gaudens now fronts the Massachusetts 
State House on Beacon Hill. The attack was dash- 
ing but unsuccessful. As the assailants approached 
the fort the Federal guns were necessarily silenced 




I'nM.-i" I .V 1 n^l. !■. I \ ■. 

ARBITRATION IN THt TRENCHES NEAR MANILA 



SEOJ 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 537 

lest they destroy their own men, and the Confederates 
returning to their own guns beat back, the Union lines. 
The rampart was passed but those who crossed it 
were captured. Night fell with the Confederate flag 
still flying. The Federals had lost 246 dead, 880 
wounded, and about 400 taken prisoners. The Con- 
federate loss was 174. 

Fort Wagner was destined to hold out until the 
middle of September, when a furious bombardment 
from land and sea, lasting with no cessation for forty- 
eight hours and accompanied by a steady pushing 
forward of the Union trenches and approaches, forced 
the defenders to abandon it. Prior to that time the 
Union guns on Morris Island had been turned on 
Fort Sumter, firing directly over Wagner, and re- 
duced the masonry structure in the middle of the 
harbor to a shapeless mass of ruins. This bombard- 
ment continued for seven days, and destroyed Sumter 
as an offensive work though it was still held and the 
Confederate flag flaunted proudly over it until 
Charleston itself was evacuated by the Confederates 
February 18, 1865. 

Meanwhile throughout the whole theatre of war, 
from Virginia to Arkansas, each week witnessed raids, 
skirmishes, battles, and expeditions, none of them 
bearing any relation to the grand strategy of the war 
but all of which served the useful end of " whittling 
away the Confederacy." Notable among them was a raid 
from Vicksburg to Meridian, Mississippi, by General 
Sherman, with twenty-five thousand men. His ex- 
pedition had a two-fold purpose, part of which was 
to create a diversion, when General Sooy-Smith should 
attack and destroy the dashing Confederate cavalry- 
man, Forrest. To this extent Sherman failed. For- 
rest first tricked, then whipped General Smith, and 
with less than half their force drove the Federals 



538 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

northward to Memphis, capturing guns, colors, and 
men. Sherman's own expedition met with practically 
no opposition. He laid a blight on the country 
through which he passed. 

No public property was spared, nor anything which 
could be applied to public uses. Mills, railway sta- 
tions, and rolling stock were burned. Railway tracks 
were torn up, the ties heaped on roaring fires, and 
the rails heated red-hot and twisted out of shape. 
Sometimes the soldiers would twine a hot rail about 
a young tree, making what they facetiously termed 
" Jeff Davis's neckties." To Sherman's lines came 
escaping slaves in droves, old and young men, women 
and pickaninnies. Greatly as they impeded the march 
of the column they were not driven away, partly 
because the war had now assumed the aspect of a 
struggle against slavery, and partly because every 
slave carried away helped to weaken the Confederacy, 
which had relied upon the blacks to stay on the plan- 
tations and raise crops while the whites went to the 
front and fought with Lee and Johnston. Moreover, 
the slaves still further impoverished their masters by 
taking horses and mules with them when they fled, 
so that after Sherman's army had passed, most of the 
plantations in its track were stripped of their live- 
stock, both cattle and human. 

When Meridian was reached its defenders were 
nowhere to be seen. Sherman took possession and 
waited for Smith. Days passed without any word 
coming from the cavalry column. After a week -in 
Meridian Sherman set the torch to the public build- 
ings and retraced his steps toward Vicksburg. He 
had taken 400 prisoners, destroyed 150 miles of 
track, 67 bridges, 20 locomotives, and 28 cars; had 
burned several thousand bales of cotton, a number of 
steam mills, and over 2,000,000 bushels of corn. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 539 

Over 1,000 Union white refugees and 8,000 negroes 
followed in his wake. 

In 1866, the historian Lossing, passing through 
Meridian, asked the mayor of the town if Sherman 
had done the place much injury. "Injury!" was 
the emphatic reply, " why, he took it away with him."" 

Most of these raids were made by the Federals, the 
Confederates by this time having settled down to a 
defensive war. But Forrest, one of the most brilliant 
cavalry leaders of history, exultant with his victory 
over General Smith, marched north into Tennessee with 
the purpose of taking the Federals' forts along the 
east bank of the Mississippi. He marched swiftly, 
for his force was barely three thousand men. A Union 
fort at Union City surrendered to him though a whole 
brigade of Federals was close at hand, coming to its 
relief. At Paducah he took the town and pillaged it, 
but could not drive the Federals from their neighbor- 
ing works nor terrify them into a surrender. 

At Union City Forrest had forced a surrender by 
sending a formal threat that if compelled to storm the 
works no quarter would be given to its defenders. A like 
message at Paducah failed of its effect. In the past this 
has not been an unusual menace for an assailant to 
flaunt before a foe, but it is not approved in modern 
codes of war, nor for that matter has it ever been ob- 
served in all its bloody completeness. But Forrest's 
own men took it seriously, though probably their com- 
mander did not so intend, and at Fort Pillow, not far 
north of Memphis, they put the bloody threat into 
execution. 

This strong fort was garrisoned by about six hun- 
dred men — too few to properly man such extensive 
works. Two companies were made up of white Union 
sympathizers from Tennessee; four companies were 
negroes. The force was therefore peculiarly hateful 



540 STORY OFOURARMY 

to Forrest's command. The Confederates invested 
the fort on the 12th of April, 1864. A preliminary 
attack showed clearly that the defenders could not 
resist a determined assault and Forrest made a demand 
for surrender, coupled with the usual threat of no 
quarter. Major Bradford, the Union commander, re- 
fused. One Union gunboat lay in the river below the 
fort, and two others were seen coming down stream. 
Bradford thought they were bringing reenforcements, 
or at least would cover his retreat and he therefore 
bade the Confederates defiance. But there was no re- 
treat to cover. The assailants swept over the ram- 
parts and into the fort at the very first charge. The 
sight of the negro soldiers maddened them, and they 
began a true orgy of murder. The bayonet was glut- 
ted, and even the wounded were slain where they lay. 
When the slaughter was stopped and some effort made 
to care for the wounded with decent humanity the 
Federal gunboats came up and began throwing shells 
into the fort, which set the hospitals afire and some of 
the inmates burned miserably on their cots. It was 
the crudest and bloodiest affray of its size during the 
war, putting the North aghast with horror. Forrest, 
himself, did not seem to recognize the position in which 
it put him. In his first report of his victory Forrest 
writes boastfully of the carnage. " The river was 
dyed," he says, " with the blood of the slaughtered 
for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was 
upward of five hundred killed, but few of the ofiicers 
escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is to 
be hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the North- 
ern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with South- 
erners." 

Far down in the Southwest the Administration at 
Washington planned one campaign for political effect 
which came near ending in serious disaster and did in 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 541 

fact close in ridiculous collapse. The country of the 
Red River, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas was a 
rich and fertile region, thoroughly secession in spirit 
and supplying great stores of produce to feed the more 
eastern portions of the Confederacy which had been 
devastated by the Northern armies. The Adminis- 
tration thought that an expedition which should show 
the people of that region something of the power of 
the United States and incidentally destroy any forts 
they might have erected would be a useful object lesson. 

Accordingly, about the middle of March, General 
Franklin commanding about seventeen thousand men 
drawn from Banks's army, left New Orleans and 
marched northward. Admiral Porter, with fifteen 
iron-clad gunboats and a fleet of transports carrying 
about ten thousand men from Sherman's army, was 
painfully picking its way up the Red River, feeling 
out the tortuous channel and laboriously removing the 
obstructions with which the Confederates had plenti- 
fully strewn it. The two forces were to meet at 
Alexandria, proceeding thence to Shreveport where 
ten thousand men from Arkansas under General Steele 
were to meet them. 

The expedition was a complete failure from a mili- 
tary and political point of view. Shreveport, the ob- 
jective, was never reached. Two battles were fought 
on consecutive days at Sabine Cross Roads and at 
Pleasant Grove. In the first Banks's army was crush- 
ingly defeated but as the Confederates were pushing 
him hard with his army in complete rout, he was re- 
enforced on the second day by General Emery and, 
turning, beat the enemy back. But though he regained 
the ground he had lost he, nevertheless, despite the 
disapproval of his officers, ordered a retreat and the 
abandonment of the expedition. 

The Red River enterprise derives its chief interest 



542 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

from the narrow escape of Porter's fifteen fine gun- 
boats from destruction or capture. The navy got it- 
self into its predicament, but as the army extricated 
it the incident has proper place in this story. 

Banks, retreating with his army to Alexandria, Por- 
ter strove to follow him. This was a difficult task, for 
the water in the Red River was low and falling hourly. 
Scarcely had the flotilla left Grand Ecore when the 
" Eastport," the largest of the iron-clads, ran full tilt 
upon a torpedo and speedily went to the bottom. Por- 
ter sent to Alexandria for pump boats, by which she 
was soon pumped out. Progress down the stream was 
resumed and the voyage was made lively by the Con- 
federates, who swarmed upon the banks, and with 
field pieces and rifles " peppered " the gunboats and the 
unarmored transports. The " Eastport," though 
raised and repaired, was with difficulty kept afloat. 
More than once she went to the bottom and was labori- 
ously raised while the Confederates practised their 
marksmanship upon those engaged in the task. Fin- 
ally Porter abandoned all hope of saving her, and fifty 
barrels of gunpowder, touched off with a slow match 
soon completed her destruction. 

Soon after the destruction of the " Eastport " the 
Confederates brought a light battery to the bank and 
opened fire on the little " tin-clad " *' Cricket," Ad- 
miral Porter's flag-ship. The engagement was hot. 
Twenty cannon were flashing from the shore and the 
crashing timbers of the gunboat bore eloquent testi- 
mony to the Confederate marksmanship. Though 
under fire only five minutes the vessel was struck thirty- 
eight times, and out of her crew of fifty, twelve were 
killed and nineteen wounded. A Union transport, the 
" Champion," heavily laden with runaway slaves, was 
struck by a shell, which pierced her boiler and filled 
the decks with scalding steam. Of the two hundred 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 543 

blacks on the ill-fated vessel only fifteen escaped alive. 
Sorely scarred and with decks swept by bullets, the 
gunboats cautiously made their way down the river to 
Alexandria, where the rest of the fleet lay at anchor. 
Here Porter found his officers wearing very long faces. 
The river had fallen until now jagged rocks reared 
their peaks above the water everywhere except in a 
channel scarce twenty feet wide, and which soundings 
proved to be only three feet deep. Twelve of the 
squadron lay in the deep water above this barrier, 
which was known as the " falls." How to get vessels 
drawing four feet of water through a three-foot chan- 
nel was a problem that baffled the ingenuity of the navy 
officers. Porter himself was beaten, and contented 
himself with heaping maledictions on the river and 
telegraphing to Grant, beseeching him not to withdraw 
the troops that alone kept the stranded navy from fall- 
ing into the hands of the Confederates. 

In this emergency an army officer came to the res- 
cue. Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, a Wisconsin engineer, 
suggested that by building a dam across the river be- 
low the falls, the water on the falls could be raised 
sufficiently to allow the vessels to pass. It was with 
some difficulty that Colonel Bailey obtained permission 
to make the experiment. 

Three thousand men and two hundred teams were 
employed upon this gigantic piece of engineering. 
Forests were felled, and houses, barns, sheds, and 
mills for miles around were torn down to supply lumber 
for the work. The heavy machinery of sugar houses 
and cotton gins and presses was seized to supply ma- 
terial for weighting down the ponderous cribs of which 
the dam was formed. The roads intersecting the 
neighboring country were cut up by wagons heavy laden 
with stone gathered for the same purpose. As the 
dam, building at once from both sides of the stream, 



544 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

began to reach out toward the centre of the current, 
the water rose gradually, and the current rushing 
through the central gap grew fiercer with each foot of 
progress. The work went on day and night, and when 
the glare of great fires on the banks, and torches in 
the hands of the workers flashed ruddily upon the black 
and seething waters, the scene was one of wild pictur- 
esqueness. The wing extending from the south bank 
of the river was built wholly by black troops, and the 
negroes enlivened their work with their barbaric plan- 
tation songs and loud badinage. 

Eight days and nights the work went on apace. At 
last the two wings were brought so near together that 
two boats loaded with brick and sunk in the centre 
completed the structure. The water rose rapidly, and 
soon the rocks that had barred the progress of the gun- 
boats down stream were hidden from view. Hope 
began to rise in the breasts of the sailors. The heavy 
cannon and the cargoes were sent ashore from the 
gunboats, which, thus lightened, began the passage of 
the rapids. This was still no easy task. The channel 
was narrow and tortuous. The boats could not be 
given headway, but were kept under control by long 
cables, made fast now to one bank and then to the 
other. So slow was the work that when night fell 
only three of the vessels, the " Fort Hindman," the 
" Osage," and the " Neosho," had accomplished the 
passage. The rest remained above the rapids, wait- 
ing until daylight should enable them to follow. 

There was little sleep in the tents of the Union gen- 
erals that night. The rising waters were bringing 
tremendous pressure upon the hastily constructed dam, 
and Banks, who went down to the riverside at mid- 
night, saw that it showed signs of weakening. He 
notified Porter, who sent word to his captains to be 
prepared for emergencies. The emergency came, for 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 545 

at daybreak the dam burst just at the centre. The 
two brick-laden barges were swung to right and left 
as two doors swing open when struck in the centre. 
Admiral Porter stood on the bank and witnessed the 
disaster. Leaping into his saddle he galloped up to 
where the main body of the fleet lay at anchor above 
the rapids. 

" Cast off and go down under full head of steam," 
he cried to the captain of the " Lexington." The or- 
der was obeyed. The vessel plunged into the rapids 
where the current was now running at full nine miles an 
hour. All the precautions which had been observed 
the day before were now thrown to the winds. It was 
a time for taking desperate chances. As by a miracle 
the perilous passage was accomplished, but the way 
opened for the " Lexington " closed behind her, for 
the water fell so rapidly that none of the other vessels 
could follow in her wake. 

Thousands of men lined the banks of the river when 
the " Lexington " steamed into the pool above the 
dam. The whole camp had turned out to see the gun- 
boat shoot through the gap. Amid anxious silence the 
vessel's prow was turned toward the narrow chasm 
through which the turbid water was rushing in a veri- 
table cataract. With clear gaze and steady hand the 
pilot held the boat true on her course. She swept 
between the wing dams, swayed and rocked a moment 
as she made the plunge over the three-foot fall, then 
sped along swiftly and unharmed until she reached the 
deep and tranquil water below. A mighty cheer arose 
from the assembled multitude, and Bailey was con- 
gratulated on every side for his triumph and the pro- 
motion which all knew would surely reward so notable 
an achievement. The other vessels that floated just 
above the dam followed quickly in the wake of the 
"Lexington"; one only, the "Neosho," whose cap- 



546 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tain failed to keep her engines going at full speed, suf- 
fering any injury. 

No time was lost, after this happy deliverance, by 
either Banks or Porter, in abandoning the Red River. 
The complete failure of the expedition was admitted, 
and army and navy made their way back to the shores 
of the Mississippi, thankful for their escape and feel- 
ing that the laborious and disastrous two months' cam- 
paign had been foolish in conception and worse than 
weak in its execution. In it honors were gained by 
one officer alone, for Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, who 
built the dam and saved Porter's fleet, returned 
from the Red River country a brigadier-general. 



CHAPTER XXV 

Grant Called to Chief Command — The Wilderness Again — General 
Longstreet Wounded — Battle of Spottsylvania Court-House — 
Battle of Cold Harbor— Death of General " Jeb " Stuart. 

Three years of war had taxed heavily even the mag- 
nificent resources of the North. Tens of thousands of 
homes had suffered the visitation of the angel of death. 
Every village had its two or three crippled veterans. 
Even with the flood of immigrants pouring in at the 
seaports it was getting difficult to fill up the gaps in 
the army. And still the South was unsubdued. 

President Lincoln was convinced of the need for a 
new general-in-chief of the armies. Halleck had failed, 
and in the search for a man to replace him the Presi- 
dent called to Washington Ulysses S. Grapt, whom he 
had never met but whose career he had carefully 
watched. Grant's capture of Forts Henry and Donel- 
son, his swift snatch of victory from the jaws of de- 
feat at Shiloh, his dogged and successful siege of Vicks- 
burg, and his brilliant victory at Chattanooga had 
earned for him the name of a general who had never 
lost a battle. Accordingly, he was commissioned lieu- 
tenant-general and in twenty-four hours from the 
moment of receiving his commission from the hands of 
the President was at the headquarters of the Army of 
the Potomac at Brandy Station, conferring with Gen- 
eral Meade. 

There were then but two considerable bodies of Con- 
federates in the field, namely, Lee's army in Virginia, 
and a force under General Joseph E. Johnston, at 
Dalton, Georgia. In planning the grand strategy of 

547 



548 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the war Grant reserved Lee's army for his own special 
attention. To Sherman he wrote, " You I propose to 
move against Johnston's army, to break it up and to get 
into the interior of the enemy's country as far as you 
can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war 
resources." How thoroughly Sherman carried out 
this plan we shall see. Subordinate expeditions were 
assigned to Banks, Butler, and Sigel, all of which failed. 
From this time on the armies of Grant and Sherman 
were the great hammers that pounded the life out of 
the Confederacy. 

Grant rightly saw that Lee's army was the real 
heart of the Confederacy. With it destroyed the war 
would end. Accordingly, he determined to take per- 
sonal command of the Army of the Potomac despite 
the fears of his old comrade-in-arms, Sherman, who 
besought him to leave the neighborhood of Washington 
and the politicians and return to the West. Meade 
greeted him with soldierly frankness. 

" You may wish an officer who has served with you 
in the West — Sherman, for instance — to take command 
now of the Army of the Potomac," said that general. 
" You need feel no hesitation in removing me. I will 
serve wherever I am ordered." Grant declined the 
offer, retaining General Meade in command. In his 
" Memoirs " he writes, " This incident gave me even a 
more favorable opinion of Meade than did his great 
victory at Gettysburg the July before." 

The winter was spent in strengthening the army. 
Grant saw that the Confederate cavalry was vastly 
superior to that of the Federals and called Sheridan 
from the West to reorganize it. The choice was well 
made. Under " Little Phil," the Union horse for the 
first time equalled that of " Jeb " Stuart, " Fitz " Lee or 
the other Confederate cavaliers. The Confederate 
army was reduced to sorry straits, but was still a savage 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 549 

fighting machine. The clothing of the soldiers was in 
tatters — patched, mended, and darned until no trace 
of the original fabric remained. " A new pair of shoes 
or an overcoat was a luxury," writes General Law, 
" and full rations would have astonished the stomachs 
of Lee's ragged Confederates. But they took their 
privations cheerfully and complaints were seldom 
heard. I recall an instance of one hardy fellow whose 
trousers were literally ' worn to a frazzle,' and would 
no longer adhere to his legs even by dint of the most 
persistent patching. Unable to buy, beg, or borrow 
another pair, he wore instead a pair of thin cotton 
drawers. By nursing these carefully he managed to 
get through the winter." For food the luckless gray- 
coats were scarcely better off. But ill-fed and half- 
clothed as they were, Lee's soldiers were drilled to 
the highest point of discipline, inured to the hardships 
of war and the horrors of battle, animated with an 
untiring enthusiasm, and reposing implicit and unques- 
tioning confidence in their general. The Army of 
Northern Virginia was a tiger. Though its flanks 
were gaunt and its coat scarred, it was none the less 
fierce, sinewy, and cunning. " Lee's army," said a 
contemporary Northern writer, *' is an army of vet- 
erans; it is an instrument sharpened to a perfect edge. 
You turn its flanks — well, its flanks are made to be 
turned. This effects little or nothing. All that we 
reckon as gained, therefore, is the loss of life inflicted 
on the enemy." 

A comparison of the numerical strength of the two 
armies which were about to grapple with each other, 
is important at this juncture. In the Army of the 
Potomac on April 30, 1864, equipped and ready for 
action, were 99,438 men. The Ninth army corps 
numbering 20,000 more, under the command of Gen- 
eral Burnside, joined the Army of the Potomac on 



550 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the 6th of May, thus swelling the grand total to 120,- 
000 men. To oppose this magnificent army, General 
Lee had but about 62,000 men. He enjoyed the ad- 
vantage of position, and of this he skilfully availed him- 
self; but the disparity of numbers was so great that 
we to-day can see that the contest was hopeless from 
the start. 

Grant determined to follow Hooker's ill-fated line 
of attack and march through the Wilderness to attack 
Lee's right flank. It seemed to be braving fate to 
plunge once again into that desolate and almost im- 
penetrable territory alive with memories of Union dis- 
aster. But the general was convinced that that line 
was tactically sound and at midnight of May 3, 1864, 
the army moved by several roads followed by a train 
of wagons which in single file would have extended 
sixty-five miles. Lee speedily learned of the advance 
of the Federals and not without satisfaction. The 
movement menaced his right flank, it is true, and drove 
him from his snug intrenchments, but he felt confident 
that his superior knowledge of the intricacies of the 
Wilderness roads would give him the advantage. 

Accordingly, he no sooner heard that the Federals 
were moving than he put his own columns in motion, 
and the night of the 4th of May saw vast bodies of 
armed men pouring from every point of the compass 
into that dense and gloomy thicket whence had risen 
once before the roar of musketry, the yells of the 
charging troops, the screams of the wounded, and all 
the horrid din of battle. 

The battle which raged in the cavernous shades of 
the Wilderness baffles description of its tactical fea- 
tures. It would be too much to say that it was a battle 
without a plan, but the plans of both Grant and Lee 
were impeded and wrecked by the difl^cult nature of 
the ground. Whole brigades went astray. Colonels 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 551 

were seen leading their regiments into battle by the 
aid of pocket compasses. Supporting bodies of troops 
became separated and went into the fight with their 
flanks exposed, yet in most instances the enemy — 
equally nonplussed by the character of the battle field 
— failed to see and to seize his advantage. It was a 
battle without coherence or strategy — a battle in the 
dark. If Von Moltke's dictum, that the operations 
of the American Civil War were but the struggles of 
two armed mobs, was at all well-founded, it was in the 
case of the battle of the Wilderness. A Southern 
writer, familiar with the spot in which the battle was 
fought, says of it: " The country was sombre — a land 
of thicket, jungle, undergrowth, ooze, where men could 
not see each other twenty yards oft, and assaults had to 
be made by the compass. The fights there were not 
even as easy as night attacks in open country for at 
night you can travel by the stars. Death came unseen; 
regiments stumbled on each other, and sent swift 
destruction into each other's ranks guided by the crack- 
ling of the bullets. It was not war — military manoeu- 
vring; science had as little to do with it as sight. Two 
wild animals were hunting each other; when they heard 
each other's steps they sprung and grappled. The 
conqueror advanced or went elsewhere. In this mourn- 
ful and desolate thicket did the great campaign of 
1864 begin. Here in blind wrestle as at midnight did 
two hundred thousand men in blue and gray clutch 
each other — bloodiest and weirdest of encounters. 
War had nothing like it. The genius of destruction, 
tired apparently of the old commonplace killing, had 
invented the ' unseen death.' At five in the morning 
the opponents closed in, breast to breast, in the thicket. 
Each had thrown up their slight temporary breast- 
works of saplings and dirt; beyond this they were un- 
protected. The question now was which would sue- 



552 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ceed In driving his adversary from these defences al- 
most within a few yards of each other, and from be- 
hind which crackled the musketry. Never was sight 
more curious. On the low line of these works, dimly 
seen in the thicket, rested the muzzles, spouting flame; 
from the depths rose cheers; charges were made and 
repulsed, the lines scarcely seeing each other; men fell 
and writhed and died unseen — their bodies lost in the 
bushes, their death groans drowned in the steady, con- 
tinuous, never-ceasing crash," 

The fighting of the first day was both brief and in- 
decisive. It was the sort of fight that the Army of 
the Potomac was accustomed to see followed by a re- 
treat, or at least, a long period of inactivity. But 
Grant ordered an assault all along the line for the next 
morning and throughout the night the aids were thread- 
ing their way through the tangled forest bearing or- 
ders to widely separated division commanders. The 
telegraph, too, was ticking, for Grant first introduced 
its use on a battle field. Nowadays, telephones, au- 
tomobiles and aeroplanes form part of an army's 
equipment. 

At five o'clock in the morning the storm of battle 
burst. The thickets just beginning to put on the soft 
green hues of spring, the clear light of the early morn- 
ing, and the birds twittering among the twigs made a 
picture of peace and beauty destined to be short-lived. 
The soldiers had received their orders the night before, 
and when the battle began it was with a crash, and the 
dogs of war were quickly in full cry. Hancock's line 
swung forward in magnificent style and with invincible 
determination. Hill's men in vain endeavored to stem 
the tide. "Where is Longstreet?" was the cry all 
along the Confederate right flank, where men were 
falling and regiments crumbling away before the fury 
of the assault. For a moment even General Lee's lion 










i 5 



@ 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 553 

heart sank within him, and he sent officers to prepare 
his baggage trains for a hurried retreat. But Long- 
street did not fail him. The news of the peril of 
Hill's line had no sooner reached him than he put 
spurs to his horse and called upon his men to take the 
double-quick. Right nobly they responded, and the 
long column surged down the plank road toward the 
sound of the musketry. The thunder of the cadenced 
tread of thousands of running men rose over the roar 
of the battle. It was but a short march to the front 
and soon the regiments were swinging out into line 
of battle and going into the fight. Lee himself was 
working among the flying bullets, trying to rally Hill's 
troops, when Longstreet's fresh regiments came up. 
A Texas regiment, sweeping by to the charge, cheered 
lustily for " Marse Robert." The fire of battle blazed 
fierce within the great Confederate commander, and he 
spurred his horse and took his place in the charging 
ranks. A confused medley of cries rose all along the 
hne. " No, no ! " " Go back ! " " Lee to the rear ! ' 
" We won't go in unless you go back." For a moment 
Lee seemed disinclined to obey the wishes of his men, 
but when a private dropped from the ranks and, seiz- 
ing his bridle, turned his horse's head to the rear, he 
yielded with evident disappointment, and rode off to 
join General Longstreet. 

The timely arrival of Longstreet's troops upon the 
battle field did its work. The Federal advance was 
checked and the tide began to set the other way. The 
Union troops were beaten back to their first line of 
breastworks, where they maintained themselves stub- 
bornly for a while, but were ultimately dislodged. 
Gregg's brigade of Texans was fairly sacrificed by the 
fury with which it hurled itself against Hancock. 
Eight hundred men went in on that charge which Lee 
wished to lead; less than four hundred came out. 



554 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

In Hancock's front the fighting was fierce and almost 
without cessation throughout the day. There Lee 
himself and Lee's ablest generals, Hill and Longstreet, 
were pitted against one of the greatest soldiers that 
the Military Academy at West Point has ever trained. 
Soldiers unequalled for steadiness, intelligence, and de- 
votion in all the history of war, were led by officers who 
knew not how to flinch. It was no time for the nice- 
ties of tactics or strategy. Of the seventy-five thou- 
sand men engaged in that part of the field, probably not 
more than a thousand could be seen at one time from 
any point. The battle had lulled a little when Han- 
cock's advance had been checked by the impetuous 
assault which signalized the arrival of the troops of 
Longstreet on the field. Hancock did not believe that 
Longstreet's whole force was in his front. His spies 
and the stories of some prisoners had led him to be- 
lieve that Longstreet's attack would fall on his left 
flank, and the roar of the cannon of Stuart and Sheri- 
dan, who were fighting in that direction, led him to 
believe that the expected flank attack was yet to come. 
Accordingly, he redoubled the fury of his attacks upon 
Hill, who, being now reenforced by all of Longstreet's 
corps, beat back his assailants with ease. Stanch 
breastworks of logs protected the Confederates from 
the fire of their assailants, and as the ground sloped 
abruptly from the rear of these redoubts the bullets of 
the Federals flew all too high. Colonel Lyman, who 
visited the Confederate position after the battle, writes 
that the saplings and bushes beyond the breastworks 
were mowed off by the flying missiles at a point a little 
higher than a man's head, as though they had been 
hewed down with knives. 

The day was not going well for the Federals. Not 
only was Hancock's advance checked, but his flank was 
turned and the Confederates, repeating Stonewall Jack- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 555 

son's tactics on the field of his death, were carrying 
everything before them when a strange mischance, al- 
most precisely paralleling that which slew Stonewall, 
checked their progress: 

General Longstreet, with his staff, riding through 
the woods to investigate the progress of the flank at- 
tack, came suddenly upon a detached body of Confed- 
rates. The oflicers were taken for Federals. A hasty 
volley was fired and several saddles were emptied. 
Among those who fell was General Longstreet, not 
killed, but sorely wounded. In a moment all was con- 
fusion in the Confederate lines. The news quickly 
passed from regiment to regiment that " old Pete " was 
wounded — wounded as Stonewall Jackson had been by 
his own men on that fatal field. General Lee galloped 
quickly to the spot to take command, but the golden 
moment had passed. The brief panic in the Union 
lines was ended. No more positions were to be car- 
ried by the Confederates in a rush. Hard fighting 
was to begin again. Perceiving that there was no 
longer anything to be gained by an immediate attack. 
General Lee ordered a cessation of the assault, until 
the confusion which the fall of Longstreet had caused 
in the Confederate army could be allayed. 

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the broken 
lines of gray could be discerned from the Federal po- 
sition approaching again to the assault through the 
dense undergrowth, and between the thickly growing 
trees. The sound of the battle, which had for a time 
been stilled, rose again upon the air, and the watchers 
on the hill-sides, overlooking the Wilderness, saw the 
murky clouds of gunpowder smoke rising above the 
tree-tops. This attack fell fiercest on the divisions of 
Mott and Birney of Hancock's corps. At first the 
Confederates carried all before them, driving the Fed- 
erals quickly from their first line of breastworks. But 



Ss6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

a second line, a little to the rear, afforded a shelter to 
the dispossessed blue-coats, who, from that point of 
vantage, aided by two batteries of artillery, poured so 
deadly a fire upon their assailants that the latter were 
fain to shelter themselves from it behind the captured 
redoubt. Then in their turn the Federals sallied out 
to the charge. A brigade of Gibbon's division, led by 
Colonel Carroll, attacked the Confederates and fairly 
drove them from the position they had won. By this 
time the wooden breastworks had caught fire and were 
blazing fiercely so that the defenders could not shelter 
themselves behind them nor could the assailants pass. 
A lurid wall of smoke and flame separated the warring 
hosts. 

Just as the sun went down the din of battle burst 
forth with redoubled vigor on the right of the Union 
line. There Lee had massed his forces and hoped 
by weight of men and metal to crush the Federal 
flank. Led on by General Gordon, the Confederates 
fell suddenly upon the brigades of Seymour and Shaler, 
who were taken entirely by surprise. The blue-coats 
thought the battle over and many of them had thrown 
themselves upon the ground to rest when this unex- 
pected attack startled them. Both of the brigade 
commanders and a great host of men were captured 
by the Confederates, and for a time it seemed as though 
the Union line were shattered. But the exertions of 
General Sedgwick and the rapid coming on of night 
robbed the men of the South of the full fruits of their 
daring attack. 

In one sense the two-days' battle in the Wilderness 
constituted a victory for the Confederates, for they 
had not merely resisted the Union attacks but had ac- 
tually driven the blue-coats from their works. They 
had inflicted upon the Federals a loss of 2,246 killed, 
12,037 wounded, and 3,383 captured or missing. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 557 

Many of the missing on both sides were wounded, 
slowly burned to death in the dense thickets which were 
fired during the battle. But in a broader sense the bat- 
tle was a disaster to the Confederates. Their losses 
were never definitely known, but were doubtless smaller 
than those of the Federals. Trustworthy estimates fix 
them at about ten thousand in all. But the North 
could afford its sacrifice, the South could not. There 
were no men left at home to replace those who fell 
in the Wilderness, no immigrant ships landing men by 
the tens of thousands at Southern ports to fill up Lee's 
shattered ranks. The blow was a crippling one and 
to make it worse Grant gave his foes no time, as had 
been the custom of the Army of the Potomac, to bind 
up their wounds. Instead he immediately issued or- 
ders to his army to move at once, to go around Lee's 
right since he could not force his way through the 
centre. When Lee heard, the morning after the battle 
that Grant's columns were marching upon Spottsylvania 
Court House, he turned to his staff with the significant 
remark, " Gentlemen, the Army of the Potomac has 
found a head at last." 

War curiously confers fame upon some very obscure 
spots even as it picks up utterly obscure men and stamps 
them with the hall mark of immortality. Shiloh was 
a log church, Chancellorsville a large farm-house, Bull 
Run a railroad crossing, and after the battle of the 
Wilderness the two armies met to fight again at Spott- 
sylvania which was a wooden court house, a country 
store, a tavern, and a tap-room. Here several roads 
crossed and it was a point of vantage to Grant in his 
cherished purpose of putting himself between' Lee and 
Richmond. The accomplishment of that purpose was 
not easy. The Union commander was quick and 
shrewd, the Confederate watchful and quicker. 
Though Grant made every effort to move his army 



558 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

without attracting Lee's attention, his advance on 
reaching Spottsylvania was confronted by the familiar 
scene of a long line of earthworks defiantly displaying 
the Confederate flag. While Warren, who led the 
Federal columns, was considering this spectacle, all 
Longstreet's troops and finally all of Lee's army 
poured into Spottsylvania and once again the Army of 
Northern Virginia stood proudly and defiantly between 
Grant and the Confederate capital. 

The two armies clashed on the morning of Sunday, 
May 8th, but only the skirmishers and pickets were 
engaged. The main body of the troops was engaged 
rather with pick and shovel than with rifles. The 
sharpshooters of both sides harassed the workers on 
the redoubts and in the spluttering fusillade General 
Sedgwick of the Union army met his death. The 
general was superintending the alignment of a body 
of his troops under a sharp fire. The shrill scream 
of the minie balls seemed more demoralizing to the 
men than in many a hot battle, and their heads bobbed 
involuntarily. 

" What, what men! " cried out Sedgwick. " Dodg- 
ing this way for single bullets! What will you do 
when they open fire along the whole line? I am 
ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at 
this distance." 

For a moment the men straightened up proudly, 
but a few seconds after, a soldier standing near Gen- 
eral Sedgwick dodged almost to the ground as a bullet 
passed close to him with a terrifying whiz. " Why, I 
am ashamed of you, my man," said Sedgwick, and 
again he repeated his remark, " They couldn't hit an 
elephant at that distance." But while the soldier was 
making his excuses the shrill whistle came again and 
this time a dull, heavy stroke told that it had found a 
mark. Those whose gaze was turned toward General 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 559 

Sedgwick were horrified to see the blood gush from his 
cheek a little below his left eye. With a smile on his 
face he turned toward his chief of staff, tottered an 
instant, and fell heavily to the ground, carrying down 
the officer who tried to support him. 

The next day the Union troops attacked at the cen- 
tre, crossing the river Po and charging valiantly but 
without success. Before their charge the Confeder- 
ates had caught one of Hancock's divisions on their 
side of the Po, and had driven it back with heavy loss. 
All along the line the Federals were either held in check 
or driven back except at one point where General 
Upton had attacked and carried a salient angle in the 
enemy's line. More than a thousand prisoners and 
several battle flags were captured at this point. But 
the success was not followed up. Though the breach 
was made in the Confederate lines no effort was made 
to enlarge it. The Confederates, keenly awake to the 
value of the position they had lost, dashed fiercely 
against it and at nightfall, no aid having been sent 
him, Upton withdrew his troops. But the salient an- 
gle thus retaken by the Confederates was destined to 
be the scene of the most desperate fighting of the fol- 
lowing day. 

At the end of the first day at Spottsylvania the Fed- 
erals may be said to have been defeated. They had 
undertaken to brush the Confederates out of the path to 
Richmond and had failed. Before them still stood the 
Confederate breastworks with the Stars and Bars de- 
fiantly flying. But the dogged persistence of Grant 
was not shaken. He spent the night planning the re- 
newal of the conflict for the morrow, and at midnight 
sent off a despatch to Washington claiming the result 
of the day as favorable to the Union cause. In a 
sense it was thus favorable, for though the Union loss 
had about equalled that of the Confederates, to the 



s6o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

latter it was an irreparable loss. They could not re- 
place dead soldiers. The North could. Grant might 
have lost six battles but if in each the victory had cost 
the enemy ten thousand men he would have triumphed 
in the end for there would have been none of Lee's 
army left. From the very moment Grant took com- 
mand of the Army of the Potomac this idea must have 
possessed his mind, for he was unsparing of his own 
men provided heavy loss could be inflicted on the enemy. 
Hence he never rested after a battle to give wounded 
Confederates a chance to become effective again. Day 
after day, without intermission he pounded and tore 
at the Confederate ranks until they were worn away. 
So on this night of seeming reverse at Spottsylvania he 
announced his purpose to fight again the next day, and 
telegraphed the President, *' I propose to fight it out on 
this line if it takes all summer." 

The phrase caught the fancy of the North, sorely 
tired of the vacillating policy of past generals, and was 
used as a rallying cry for months thereafter. 

The dense thickets that obstructed the view of the 
Confederate lines had made any precise knowledge of 
their plan and extent impossible, and the first day's 
fighting had been very largely, on the part of the Fed- 
erals, for the purpose of determining the vulnerable 
point. Upton's success at the salient angle had re- 
vealed this, and Grant determined to make it the point 
of attack. 

A chill and gusty rain fell throughout the nth. It 
often, and indeed generally happened during the war 
that the day following a battle was rainy — a fact which 
has led to many interesting speculations as to the possi- 
bility of producing rain artificially by concussions and 
the burning of gunpowder. The rain that fell on the 
bloody field of Spottsylvania put an end, for the time, 
to active hostilities. The soldiers crouched about their 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 561 

smouldering campfires wrapped in their blankets, 
and talked of the events of the campaign, and 
hinted darkly of the possible fatalities in the as- 
sault that all knew would be ordered for the 
morrow. Indeed, preparations for this assault be- 
gan to be made early in the day. Aides went gal- 
loping from one division commander to another 
carrying orders. General Grant had determined to 
attack at four o'clock the next morning, they said. 
Hancock's men — the Second corps — were to make the 
main assault at the apex of the salient. The remain- 
der of the army were to attack all along the line, that 
Lee might not send troops from any point to the aid 
of those upon whom Hancock's assault was to fall. 

General Lee had not been wholly ignorant of the 
operations going on in his front, but had wholly mis- 
construed them. His scouts had reported large bodies 
of Federals in motion and he at once jumped to the 
conclusion that Grant had begun another flanking move- 
ment. In order to have his own army ready to take 
up the march, he ordered that all cannon posted in 
places difficult of access should be withdrawn. Under 
this order all the batteries but two were withdrawn 
from the salient, and that point weakened just as the 
Federals were about to assault it. The Confederates 
were not blind to the fact that the salient invited at- 
tack, and they had built a second line of works in its 
rear to which its defenders might retire in case of an 
emergency. 

Four o'clock came — the hour set by Grant for the 
attack. The night was still so black that Hancock 
determined to defer the signal yet a little while. At 
half past four the signal was given and the men sprang 
forward like hounds freed from the leash. Pressing 
rapidly forward, they passed the first hundred yards 
or so without receiving any fire. Then the Confed- 



562 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

erate sentries saw these ghostly columns advancing 
upon them out of the night, and their guns rang out 
an alarm. Instantly the ramparts were ablaze and 
the assailants answered with undaunted cheers the 
volleys of the defenders. General Barlow says that 
his men lost all alignments and pressed on in one solid 
mass. The Confederate General Johnson says, " They 
came on in great disorder with a narrow front but 
extending back as far as I could see." Then it was 
that the Confederates bitterly bewailed the absence of 
their artillery, which could have poured grape and 
canister into the assaulting column with murderous 
effect. One battery indeed — Page's — came galloping 
back to the scene of action, but it arrived too late for 
use and just in time to be captured. Before the guns 
could be unlimbered, the blue-coats were swarming over 
the ramparts everywhere, their pistols were cracking, 
their clubbed muskets and keen bayonets doing deadly 
work. The Confederates were overwhelmed, swept 
away, surrounded. Some made their way back to the 
second line of intrenchments. Still more threw down 
their arms. In less than five minutes the Federals had 
carried the salient, captured nearly five thousand men, 
twenty guns with their battery teams, thirty battle 
flags, and thousands of small arms. The guns were 
at once turned on the enemy, who were pursued through 
the woods until the pursuers came face to face with 
the second Confederate line, which held them in 
check. 

Word had speedily been carried to Lee of the suc- 
cess of Hancock's charge. He saw that his lines had 
been pierced at a vital point. Either the lost ground 
must be regained or the whole Confederate position 
would become untenable. Stripping his trenches every- 
where else, he began pouring his troops upon Hancock 
from every side. Meantime orders had been sent 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 563 

from Meade's headquarters to support Hancock, and 
the Sixth corps, with Upton's gallant brigade in the 
van, rushed to the salient. The clash of arms at 
this point now became terrific. The Federals were 
driven out of the salient, but used the breastworks as 
a protection for themselves. The Confederates trying 
to drive them away were thus crowded within the arms 
of a gigantic V, the sides of which spouted fire and 
lead. Never during the war was the fighting so fierce. 
Both sides were determined. Neither would yield a 
jot. So fast fell the dead and wounded that the spot 
became known in the annals of the Civil War as the 
" bloody angle." 

" Our section went into action with twenty-three men 
and one officer," writes a sergeant who served in Met- 
calf's battery. " The only ones who came out sound 
were the lieutenant and myself. Every horse was 
killed. Seven of the men were killd outright, sixteen 
wounded; the gun carriages were so cut with bullets as 
to be of no further service. Twenty-seven balls passed 
through the lid of the limber-chest while number six 
was getting out ammunition, and he was wounded in 
the face and neck by the fragments of wood and lead. 
The sponge bucket on my gun had thirty-nine holes 
in it." 

About the " bloody angle " the ground was soaked 
with rain and blood, and covered with prostrate men. 
A Confederate officer says in his official report: "The 
trenches on the right in the bloody angle ran with 
blood and had to be cleared of the dead bodies more 
than once." The enemies stood face to face close up to 
the breastworks on either side, and poured pistol and 
musket shots into each other at that short range. A 
major in a New York regiment was shot through the 
arm and body with a ramrod which some Confederate 
had neglected to remove from his gun before shooting. 



564 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

The problem of getting ammunition to the fighters In 
front was no easy one to solve. So rapid was the fir- 
ing that cartridge boxes were speedily emptied. On 
the Federal side pack mules were driven close up to the 
Ime of battle and boxes of ammunition dropped off 
behind the men in action, where they were opened and 
distributed by the officers. Captain Fish, of Upton's 
staff, did gallant work in supplying the Union gunners 
with ammunition. He rode back and forth between 
the guns and the caissons with stands of canister under 
his rubber coat. His tall form, towering above the 
line of battle as he sat his horse, was a tempting target 
for the Confederate riflemen, but he showed no sign of 
fear. " Give it to them, boys; I'll bring you the can- 
ister," he cried, and rode to and fro until at last a 
bullet struck him down with a mortal wound. 

It is not often that the fury of a fight stirs a mili- 
tary officer to attempt bits of graphic description in his 
official report, but the report of Brigadier-General 
Grant, commanding a Vermont brigade, shows how 
vividly the scene impressed itself upon the mind of 
that commander. 

" It was not only a desperate struggle," he writes, 
" but it was literally a hand-to-hand fight. Nothing 
but the piled-up logs or breastworks separated the com- 
batants. Our men would reach over the logs and 
fire into the faces of the enemy; would stab over with 
their bayonets; many were shot and stabbed through 
the crevices and holes between the logs; men mounted 
the works, and with muskets rapidly handed them, kept 
up a continuous fire until they were shot down, when 
others would take their places and continue the deadly 
work. . . . Several times during the day the rebels 
would show a white flag above the works, and when 
our fire slackened jump over and surrender, and others 
were crowded down to fill their places. ... It was 



n 




Courtesy of 



FIRST BRIGADE ON MARCH 
Photograph by J. H. Hare 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 565 

there that the somewhat celebrated tree was cut off by 
bullets, there that the brush and logs were cut to pieces 
and whipped into basket stuff . . . there that the rebel 
ditches and cross sections were filled with dead men 
several deep. ... I was at the angle the next day. 
The sight was terrible and sickening, much worse than 
at Bloody Lane (Antietam). There a great many 
dead men were lying in the road and across the rails of 
the torn-down fences and out in the corn field; but they 
were not piled up several deep, and their flesh was not 
so torn and mangled as at the ' angle.' " 

All through the day, under the driving rain, the 
fight went on at the " angle." Lee could Ill-afford to 
lose the men who were falling so fast there, but he 
dared not attempt to withdraw while daylight lasted. 
To right and left of the " angle," too, the Federals 
were delivering blow after blow upon the Confederate 
lines. No success was won by the assailants on the 
right, but on the left the breastworks were carried and 
some guns taken, though the Confederates, rallying, 
forced the blue-coats out of their lines again. Not 
until nearly midnight did the thunder of the battle 
gradually die away, leaving the moans of the wounded 
and the steady drip, drip of the rain the sole sounds to 
be heard. After fighting all day for a position of but 
little serious military importance. General Lee aban- 
doned the salient and withdrew his men to the second 
line, ready for them in the rear. 

Frightful had been the loss on both sides in the san- 
guinary struggle. The bullets that flew so thick as to 
cut down a tree twenty-one inches in diameter within 
the Confederate lines, had slain only too many gallant 
Americans, each fighting for the cause he deemed right. 
The mortality among officers of high rank was great- 
est among the Confederates — Generals Daniel and Per- 
rin being killed; Walker, Ramseur, and McGowan, 



566 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

wounded; while Major-General Johnson and Brigadier 
Steuart were captured. Among the Federals three 
generals — Carroll, Wright, and Webb — were wounded. 
The total number of the killed and wounded on the 
Union side was 6,020. The number missing is re- 
ported at 800. The loss to the Confederates was far 
heavier, but the lack of official records makes any ex- 
act statement impossible. A total loss of between 
9,000 and 10,000 in killed, wounded, and captured is 
accepted as nearly accurate by the best authorities. 



" Forward by the Left Flank ! " 

The curt command that rang out in the Union lines 
after the bloody days in the Wilderness, reverberated 
once again after the slaughter at the salient angle. 
Grant had lost seven thousand men in the battle. 
Very well, but Lee had lost ten thousand. The word 
was " Keep on pounding! " The Confederates began 
to see the inevitable end. 

" So far as the Confederates were concerned," writes 
the Confederate General Law, " it would be idle to 
deny that they (as well as General Lee himself) were 
disappointed at the result of their efforts in the Wil- 
derness on the 5th and 6th of May, and that General 
Grant's constant ' hammering ' with his largely su- 
perior force had to a certain extent a depressing effect 
upon both officers and men. ' It's no use killing these 
fellows; a half-dozen take the place of every one we 
kill,' was a common remark in our army. We knew 
that our resources of men were exhausted, and that 
the vastly greater resources of the Federal Government, 
if brought fully to bear, even in this costly kind of 
warfare, must wear us out in the end." 

But Grant's determination to force the fighting was 
to some degree balked by nature which poured down 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 567 

upon the theatre of battle such drenching floods of 
rain that roads became quagmires and small streams 
impassable torrents. He ordered an attack, on Lee's 
right at dawn on the 14th of May, but so arduous 
was the midnight march, lighted up by torches, that 
it was well after six o'clock before the attack was de- 
livered and as a result it failed. There followed days 
of inconclusive fighting, each side assuming the offen- 
sive on one flank and being put on the defensive on 
the other. Into the details of the action in the days 
following the battle at Spottsylvania Court House it 
is idle to go. On the part of the Federal army the 
whole plan was to avoid attacking Lee behind breast- 
works. It was one long prolonged effort to get around 
the Confederate army's flank and take it in the rear — 
and in their endeavor the Federals were continually 
defeated. Men fell by thousands on those days of 
fighting battles the very names of which are forgotten. 
North Anna, Ox Ford, the Chickahominy, Cold Har- 
bor, all saw desperate fighting. After the battle of 
North Anna, Grant thought the war ended. " Lee's 
army is really whipped," he wrote. " The prisoners 
we have taken show it, and the action of his army 
shows it unmistakably. A battle with them outside 
of intrenchments cannot be had." 

And yet a few days later at Cold Harbor, Grant 
assaulted this beaten army and in one hour lost nearly 
6,000 men, killed and wounded. In this battle 
the Union forces were repulsed at every point of the 
line. Their losses were prodigious, 1,100 dead and 
4,517 wounded. Grant himself regretted afterwards 
having ordered the attack. Years later he wrote, " No 
advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the 
heavy losses we sustained. Indeed the advantages, 
other than those of relative losses, were on the Con- 
federate side." 



568 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Grant's line was now within six miles of Richmond, 
and there he remained with the Confederate army dog- 
gedly blocking his advance until June I2th. In the 
meantime Sheridan had made a brilliant but almost 
fruitless raid into the Confederate territory, coming 
within sound of Richmond's bells. The inception of 
the raid was curious. One day Sheridan had a furious 
quarrel with Meade and stamped out of the room 
saying, " If I'm permitted to cut loose from this 
army I'll draw Stuart after me, and I'll whip him, 
too." 

The words were repeated to Grant. Some generals 
would have been distressed over a quarrel between his 
two most trusted lieutenants. Not so he. 

" Did he say he could whip Stuart? " he asked with 
interest. 

" Yes." 

" Very well, then, let him go and do it." 

Sheridan did whip Stuart, at a place called Brandy 
Station and the great Confederate trooper was killed 
in the action. It was the fate he had coveted. " All 
that I ask of fate," he once said, " is that I may be 
killed leading a cavalry charge." He was idolized by 
the whole Confederacy, worshipped by his own men. 
" Jeb never says, 'Go, boys!' but always, 'Come, 
boys,' " was a common saying in his ranks. " I can 
scarcely think of him without weeping," said General 
Lee. 

Sheridan reached a point so near to Richmond that 
he could probably have taken the city had he desired. 
" What do you suppose we have in front of us? " he 
said to an officer who hinted they were getting into 
a tight place. " A lot of department clerks from 
Richmond who have been forced into the ranks. I 
could capture Richmond if I wanted it, but I can't 
hold it." 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 569 

Accordingly, he turned his back, on the city and re- 
turned to Grant's lines. 

After the battle at Cold Harbor the two armies 
confronted each other at close distance until June 12th. 
The situation was a wearing one on both. The lines 
were within point-blank range, the fire of the sharp- 
shooters was incessant. By day none dared rise from 
the protection of the shallow trenches; by night the 
mosquitoes and gnats made life a torture. The air 
was filled with the stench of decaying bodies — both 
animals and men. And the malarial climate and 
marshy soil made fevers and ague the common lot of 
all. 

During the campaign of persistent hammering that 
began at the Wilderness and ended a few days after 
the battle of Cold Harbor, Grant's losses almost 
equalled the total number in Lee's army. The best 
estimates fix his loss during this period at 7,620 killed, 
38,342 wounded, and 8,967 missing, or a total of 
54,929. Lee entered the campaign with an army 
of 61,953. How many would have been left to him 
had his losses equalled those of Grant is easily calcu- 
lated. 

It would be idle to deny that the repulse at Cold 
Harbor suffered after thirty days of constant fighting, 
greatly discouraged the army and the nation. North- 
ern people, as a rule, underestimated the weakening 
effect of Grant's heavy and repeated blows upon Lee's 
army. They saw only that, after thirty days of fight- 
ing and the loss of over 70,000 men — more able-bodied 
men than are to be found in a city of 150,000 people 
— Grant had only succeeded in reaching a position 
which McClellan, years before, had attained with 
scarcely any loss whatever. And as the army and 
the people at home pondered upon these things they be- 
gan to wonder whether the great uprising of the South 



570 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

could ever be quelled. But while the nation doubted, 
General Grant never faltered, and allowing his men 
some days to rest after the fatigue of a month of fight- 
ing, he sent to Washington for pontoons and ferry- 
boats, for he had determined to cross the James River 
and attack Richmond from the south. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

The War in the West — Sherman's Advance on Atlanta — Fabian 
Tactics of General Johnston — Hood Commands the Confed- 
erates — His Disastrous Gallantry — The Fall of Atlanta. 

We may now leave for a time Grant and Lee con- 
fronting each other along the Rapidan and Rappa- 
hannock — a position they long occupied — and turn 
to the west where the great war duel was being 
fought between Generals William T. Sherman and 
Joseph E. Johnston. 

It will be remembered that the promotion which 
put General Grant in command of all the military 
forces of the United States gav^e the command of 
all the troops in the West, and east of the Missis- 
sippi River, to Major-General William T. Sherman. 
Three armies — those of the Ohio, the Cumberland, 
and the Tennessee — had been consolidated under com- 
mand of this officer. His total force closely ap- 
proximated 100,000 men, and he had 254 guns. As 
with the Army of the Potomac, under Grant's grand 
strategy, Sherman's chief objective was the army of 
the enemy directly in his front. This army num- 
bered, according to the Confederate method of com- 
putation, 45,000 men, or 55,000 according to the 
Union method, which counted teamsters, cooks, camp- 
followers, and everybody, as helping to make up the 
grand total of the army. Yet, the advantage was 
not so greatly upon Sherman's side as the mere state- 
ment of his preponderance of force would seem to 
imply. He was operating in an enemy's country, where 
every farmer was almost certainly a spy for the 

571 



572 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

enemy, and not infrequently a guerrilla as well. His 
base of supplies was at Nashville, and all the ar- 
ticles necessary for the sustenance of 100,000 men 
and 35,000 beasts of burden had to be brought to 
him over a single-track railroad, 130 miles long. A 
Confederate raid or a guerrilla attack which should cut 
this railroad, would bring almost irreparable disaster 
upon Sherman's army, and he had, therefore, to detail 
large bodies of troops to guard it at every threatened 
point. 

According to his usual custom when dealing with 
subordinate officers whom he could trust. General 
Grant had given Sherman orders of only a general 
character. All the details were left to the intelli- 
gence of the general in immediate command. These 
are the words in which Grant outlined the campaign 
he desired Sherman to undertake: "You, I propose 
to move against Johnston's army, to break it up, and 
to get into the interior of the enemy's country as far 
as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against 
their war resources. I do not propose to lay down 
for you a plan of campaign, but simply to lay down 
the work it is desirable to have done, and leave you 
free to execute in your own way." 

Sherman put his army in motion May 5, 1864, ^he 
day upon which the Army of the Potomac crossed 
the Rapidan and plunged into the thickets of the 
Wilderness. Schofield, Thomas, and McPherson, 
commanded his three divisions, and all moved south- 
ward from Nashville and Chattanooga with but one 
object — to come up with Johnston and destroy him 
wherever found. But the task was no easy one. 
Johnston was a wary fox, quite aware of the nu- 
merical superiority of his foes and calmly determined 
not to be forced into fighting except when and where 
the advantage was clearly his. " No officer who 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 573 

served with me," wrote Sherman later, " will ever 
question the generalship of Joseph E. Johnston. His 
retreats were timely, in good order, and he left 
nothing behind." 

One element of Johnston's strength was the fact 
that he had, in effect, two armies: one an army of 
veterans with rifles and bayonets, the other an army 
of slaves with shovels and axes. While the first army 
was guarding the breastworks in the front the second 
was throwing up a new line in the rear, and so it 
came about that Sherman had no sooner turned the 
flank of the Confederate position that immediately 
confronted him, than the enemy fell back to a new 
line of works awaiting them. This manoeuvre was 
repeated many times between Chattanooga and Alla- 
toona, for Sherman was not inclined to storm the 
breastworks that barred his path, while Johnston 
was even less willing to come out of his works and 
fight. 

As a result of this situation the campaign was for 
a long time a matter of strategy rather than a suc- 
cession of battles. At Dalton, at Tunnel Hill, at 
Buzzard's Roost, the Confederates invited battle be- 
hind formidable breastworks, but were dislodged by 
flanking movements with little fighting. At Resaca 
it seemed for a time that the enemy would stand and 
fight, but Johnston saw that his position was preca- 
rious. A deep river flowed in his rear, crossed by 
but one bridge. Should he be defeated there could 
be no possible salvation for his army in flight and 
the Confederacy would at a stroke be deprived of its 
only army in the West. Accordingly he threw pon- 
toon bridges across the river, and while maintaining 
a lively demonstration in his front, even charging 
out of his breastworks upon the Federals, he secretly 
withdrew his army so that when they renewed the 



574 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

attack on the morning of the 17th the Confederate 
trenches were found empty. 

Sherman lost no time in putting his army in pur- 
suit. He accepted Johnston's game and determined 
to play it to the end. His first task was to repair 
the railroad bridge that had been burned. This was 
speedily accomplished. There was with Sherman's 
army a distinct corps, of about two thousand men, 
whose especial duty it was to repair wrecked rail- 
roads. They had bridge trestles ready-made and in 
waiting, and when the need arose bridged rivers and 
ravines with a rapidity truly marvelous. It was 
greatly discouraging to the Confederates to hear the 
whistle of a train coming from a road which they 
thought they had permanently wrecked, but long ex- 
perience made them regard the celerity of the Union 
repairing corps with some philosophy. Once, when 
one of the Confederates proposed staying Sherman's 
progress by blowing up a tunnel, an old campaigner 
responded, " It's no use, boys. Old Sherman carries 
duplicate tunnels with him and will replace them as 
fast as you can blow them up; better save your 
powder." 

Professional students of military tactics write in 
admiration of Johnston's tactics during this difficult 
defensive campaign in the face of a superior foe. 
President Jefferson Davis, however, was seriously dis- 
satisfied. He wanted news of battles and of Con- 
federate victories despite the disparity in the forces. 
Harassed by complaints from Richmond General 
Johnston determined to stand and fight at Cassville. 
His plan of battle was formed, his skirmishers ac- 
tively engaged when a council of war disclosed the 
opposition of his chief lieutenants. Generals Polk and 
Hood. " I am not willing," said Johnston bitterly, 
*' to indulge In a critical battle with an army much 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 575 

larger than my own, with two of my corps command- 
ers dissatisfied with my plan, and unwilling to fight 
on the ground I have assigned them." Accordingly 
the retreat was taken up once more. 

He betook himself to the mountain pass of Alla- 
toona hoping, no doubt, that Sherman would follow 
him thither, for the country was rugged and offered 
almost insurmountable difficulties to an attacking army. 
But Sherman had gone over that ground before, and 
knew the difficulties it presented. Johnston's army 
was not his only objective. Only about sixty miles 
from him at that moment was the city of Atlanta, 
" Known," Sherman wrote later, " as the Gate City 
of the South. It was full of foundries, arsenals, and 
machine shops and I knew that its capture would be 
the death-knell of the Southern Confederacy." 

Accordingly, ignoring for the moment his instruc- 
tions to persistently follow and fight the Confederate 
army, he put his own army on the march for Atlanta 
by a road far from Johnston's lines. It was an 
audacious stroke. To carry out his plan he had to 
abandon altogether the railroad and his base of sup- 
plies. Three days' rations crowded the knapsacks of 
the soldiers. These exhausted they would have to 
live on the country if Johnston seized his opportunity 
to get behind Sherman's army. But Sherman figured 
that the Confederate commander would be more eager 
to defend Atlanta than to assume the offensive, and 
he was right. From his elevated position at Alla- 
toona Johnston could see the nightly campfires and 
the daily clouds of dust that marked Sherman's ad- 
vance, and putting his own army in motion in due 
season drew a long line of log redoubts and earth- 
works across Sherman's route to Atlanta at a spot 
called New Hope Church. Steadily the fighting and 
marching progressed, Johnston offering just enough 



576 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

resistance to harass and delay the enemy without ex- 
posing his whole army to the danger of defeat and 
destruction. The constant skirmishing cost lives, It 
Is true, even though it seldom attained the dignity of 
a real battle. For example, in the three days' 
manoeuvring by which Johnston was forced out of 
his strong position at Resaca the Federal loss was 
2,747, the Confederate, 2,800. But Sherman's loss 
was less than three per cent, of his effective strength 
and he could afford It. Johnston could not. 

On the 14th of June the Confederate lines extended 
along the crests of three lofty hills called Lost, Pine, 
and Kenesaw Mountains. It had retired to that posi- 
tion after a period of fighting during which, as Gen- 
eral Sherman wrote, " Not a day, not an hour, not 
a minute was there a cessation of fire. Our skir- 
mishers were in absolute contact, the lines of battle 
and the batteries but little in the rear of the skir- 
mishers." 

In company with Generals Polk and Hardee, Johns- 
ton rode over to Pine Mountain to see about with- 
drawing the troops from that point. With their 
staffs and the soldiers from the neighboring trenches 
who gathered about them, the three generals made 
a conspicuous group on the crest of the mountain. 
Far away in the valley below, General Sherman no- 
ticed the party. By the quick flashes of sunlight that 
every now and then gleamed from the group he could 
tell that there were officers there scanning his lines 
through field-glasses. 

" Open fire upon those fellows with one of your 
batteries and make them keep under cover," said he 
to General Howard, who stood with him. 

" General Thomas has ordered me to be very 
sparing of my artillery ammunition," replied Howard. 

" That as a general rule is all right," returned 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 577 

Sherman, " but I wish to keep up a bold offensive. 
By using your artillery you make the enemy timid. 
Let one of your batteries fire three volleys." 

The guns of an Indiana battery nearby were loaded 
and aimed, and, as their deep-toned notes boomed out, 
Sherman rode on, thinking nothing more of the occur- 
rence. Shortly after, however, an orderly came to 
his headquarters with the news that the Confederate 
signal flags, which the Union officers had learned to 
interpret, were waving out from the crest of Pine 
Mountain to the station at Marietta the message, 
" Send an ambulance for the body of General Polk." 
One of the shells that were thrown by the Indiana 
battery had struck the soldier-bishop In the side, tear- 
ing its way through his body and killing him instantly. 
A soldier by education, a graduate of West Point, 
he had chosen to enter the ministry, and became a 
bishop In the Episcopal Church. But when the war 
broke out he conceived It to be his duty to cast aside 
his surplice and take up the sword in the defence of 
what he considered his country. 

Pine Mountain and Lost Mountain were succes- 
sively abandoned by Johnston. At Kenesaw Moun- 
tain he turned and hurled Hood's division savagely 
against his persistent foe, but it was beaten back with 
heavy loss. Sherman then prepared to attack in his 
turn on the morning of June 27. Preparations for 
the movement were pushed forward swiftly and with 
the utmost secrecy. In order that the general-in-chief 
might, so far as possible, supervise the action at every 
point, the crest of a lofty hill was cleared away, and 
axmen chopped vistas through the forests to each of 
the principal points on the Union line. Telegraph 
wires were strung from all parts of the field to this 
hill-top, where General Sherman established his head- 
quarters. 



578 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

At daybreak on the day appointed the Union artil- 
lery opened all along the line, and the surrounding 
hills echoed back the sonorous thunder of the cannon. 
Secure in their massive works, the Confederates bore 
the heavy fire with but scanty response. They were 
veterans, and knew well enough what this cannonade 
all along the front portended. Their ammunition and 
their energies were saved to use in the repulse of 
the infantry attack they knew was coming. They 
had not long to wait. About nine o'clock the heads 
of three attacking columns were discernible pushing 
their way forward, over swamps and through creeks, 
past slashed timber, and through dense thickets of 
underbrush. Upon these columns the Confederates 
turned their guns, knowing well enough that all other 
signs of activity in their front were but feints to with- 
draw their attention from these main atacks. The 
assailants suffered heavily. Logan's corps encoun- 
tered both a direct and a flank fire. Seven regimental 
commanders in his command fell, either dead or 
wounded. The enemy in his front had a line of 
strong rifle-pits, which they held until the attacking 
column was within half pistol-shot, when they rapidly 
retreated to their principal line. From this refuge 
Logan in vain strove to drive them, and finally, after 
suffering frightful loss, was obliged himself to take 
shelter in the rifle-pits abandoned by the Confederates. 

The fate of the attack at other points was but 
little better. Newton's division found a felled forest 
with heavy trunks and stumps and the interlaced 
branches of trees, over which they must struggle before 
they could reach the enemy's line. In this snare hun- 
dreds fell, among them the gallant General Harker. 
Everywhere along the line, from the right flank to 
the left, the blue-coats were performing prodigies of 
valor and suffering frightful loss. Numbers and gal- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 579 

lantry were no match for earthworks and gallantry. 
Sherman learned that lesson well that day at Kenesaw 
and never forgot it. 

Gradually the hopelessless of the attack forced it- 
self upon the mind of the assailants and the effort 
was abandoned. Night fell with the Confederates 
still secure in their works. They had lost less than 
six hundred men. Sherman's loss closely approached 
three thousand. " It was the hardest fight of the 
campaign up to that date," writes Sherman. 

Decisive events now follov^^ed each other with fairly 
bewildering rapidity. Twice in the next two weeks 
Johnston fell back, and the loth of July found him 
heavily intrenched behind the Chattahoochie River. 
Then the settled dislike of Jefferson Davis for Gen- 
eral Johnston manifested itself in the sudden dismissal 
of that officer from his command. " At this critical 
moment the Confederate government rendered us 
valuable service," is the way General Sherman 
chronicles the fact of his great antagonist's dismissal. 
" Being dissatisfied with the Fabian policy of General 
Johnston, it relieved him, and General Hood was 
substituted to command the Confederate army." The 
ostensible cause advanced by President Davis for the 
removal of Johnston was his failure to defeat or 
check Sherman's advance. The best military critics, 
however, have unanimously commended Johnston's 
course as the most effective one practicable under the 
circumstances. History has already vindicated Gen- 
eral Johnston, and the historians and military critics 
of the future are likely to adopt the view of General 
Grant, who writes: " For my own part I think that 
Johnston's tactics were right. Anything that could 
have prolonged the war a year beyond the time that 
it finally did close would probably have exhausted the 
North to such an extent that they might then have 



58o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

abandoned the contest and agreed to a separa- 
tion." 

" What is General Hood's character? " asked Sher- 
man of the officers about headquarters, when he heard 
of the change in the commanding officer of the Con- 
federate army. 

" He is a v'ery brave man, and a rash one," replied 
General Schofield, who had been with Hood at West 
Point. " He is the sort of a man to take desperate 
chances." 

" We are likely to have some sharp fighting, then," 
said Sherman, and he at once sent out to the different 
corps commander a warning to be prepared for sudden 
raids and sorties upon the part of the enemy. 

Very accurately had the Union officers estimated 
the character of their new antagonist and its probable 
effect upon the future of the campaign. To one of 
Hood's disposition the cautious strategy which had 
enabled Johnston to force Sherman to consume sixty- 
six days in advancing less than one hundred miles 
was only contemptible. He was for the fight. It 
did not occur to him that the scarcest article in all 
the Confederacy now was an able-bodied man not 
under arms. Johnston had kept this fact well in 
mind, and had tried in every way to so conduct his 
defence as to avoid needlessly thinning those already 
scanty ranks, which could not be replenished. So 
cautious had been his tactics that in the almost con- 
tinuous fighting from May 5 to July 4, his total losses 
were less than ten thousand men, while he inflicted 
a loss of almost eighteen thousand upon his adversary. 
This cautious policy Hood threw to the winds, and, 
even while the Federal officers were discussing his 
probable action, he was preparing to leave his secure 
earthworks and attack the Federals in theirs. 

In crossing Peachtree Creek, now in the suburbs 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 581 

of Atlanta and even then close to the city, a gap nearly 
two miles wide was left in the lines of the Federals. 
Hood thought he saw in this his opportunity, and 
swiftly poured the troops of Stewart's corps into the 
gap. There was savage hand-to-hand fighting for a 
time, for the Federals had not had time to intrench 
and the Confederates were right amongst them before 
the alarm was given. But in the end the Confederates 
were beaten back with a loss of four thousand men, 
and no gain whatsoever. Hood, conceiving that the 
removal of Johnston meant that he was expected to 
reverse the policy of his predecessor and fight at every 
opportunity, began planning another assault. 

About noon of the 22d of July, General Sherman 
and General McPherson were sitting on the front steps 
of a farm-house, talking of the chances of battle 
and of the character of the new commander of the 
Confederate army. Their horses stood near them 
in charge of an orderly. McPherson had just come 
over from his position on the left of the Union line. 
Sherman had just returned from the front, where he 
had been with Schofield. It was the day that the 
enemy's abandonment of the Peachtree Creek line had 
been discovered, and Sherman had headed his troops 
in what he expected would be a march directly into 
the city, until he discovered the new line on which 
the Confederates were still busily working, with their 
guns at their elbows, ready for instant action if neces- 
sary. Then he rode back to the farm-house where 
he met McPherson. With a map spread out before 
them the two generals were studying the situation of 
the army. The air was full of the noise of musketry 
and the heavier peals of the cannon, and occasionally 
a round-shot cut through the foliage of the trees 
above them. Yet there was no battle in progress. 
Nothing but the continual exchange of deadly missiles 



582 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

that had been kept up with scarcely any intermission 
ever since the two armies left Chattanooga. The 
two officers paid little attention to these sounds, which 
had become as familiar to their ears as the chirping 
of crickets to a farmer, or the rattle of wheels to 
the dweller in a great city. But gradually the noise 
of battle grew louder. From the east came the roar 
of musketry, fired not scatteringly but in volleys and 
the thunder of cannon, served rapidly. 

" That sounds like business," said Sherman. 
"Where is it?" 

Taking a compass from his pocket he listened in- 
tently to the sound and soon determined that it came 
from the direction of the left flank. McPherson at 
once apprehended some danger to his command, and, 
calling for his staff, leaped on his horse and galloped 
off toward the sound of battle. 

" I will send you back word what it is," he cried 
out to Sherman as he disappeared. 

An hour passed. Sherman waited eagerly for 
McPherson's promised report. At last an aide came 
galloping up, his horse covered with foam, his face 
portending that he was the bearer of evil tidings. 

" General McPherson has fallen," he cried. " He 
is either dead or a prisoner, badly wounded, within the 
enemy's lines." 

It was a heavy blow to Sherman. He loved Mc- 
Pherson as a man, and trusted him as an able and 
courageous commander. But it was no time for giv- 
ing way to grief. Where McPherson fell, serious 
danger threatened the Union army. 

" Ride fast to Logan," said he to the young officer 
who had brought the bad news. " Tell him McPher- 
son is dead and that he is the senior officer of the 
Army of the Tennessee. Tell him to attack the enemy 
on his flank and give no thought to his rear. I will 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 583 

protect that, and will send reenforcements if needed." 
The aide saluted and was off like an arrow. 

Hood had planned to flank the Union army and 
but for the merest accident would have succeeded. 
Its left flank was exposed but just at the moment 
Hardee's troops fell upon it, the Sixteenth corps of 
the Union army came up and the assailants found 
a line of battle where they expected to carry all before 
them. It was the sound of the conflict that followed 
that brought McPherson galloping to his death, for 
he had hardly reached the scene when he was slain. 
The fighting was savage all the day, for the Confed- 
erates felt it was their last stand for Atlanta. But 
as the sun sank slowly in the west and the shadows 
lengthened, the struggles of the Confederates became 
less vigorous. Their attacks were less frequent and 
lacked the enthusiasm which they had manifested 
earlier in the day. It had become evident to the 
humblest of Hood's men-at-arms that the day had 
gone against them — that for all their displays of 
courage and their generous sacrifice of life there was 
no reward. Gradually they discontinued their efforts 
until at last the sounds of battle died away, save that 
now and then some gun boomed out, throwing shells 
into the rear of a retreating Confederate column; or 
the sound of a few rapidly exchanged volleys told 
that the rear-guard of one of the retiring columns had 
halted and faced about to beat back a too pertinacious 
pursuer. 

It had been a costly day's work for Hood. He 
had lost not less than 10,000 men. In front of 
one division of the Seventeenth army corps 1,000 
dead Confederates were found by their comrades who 
came with a flag of truce. Before Logan's corps lay 
700, and elsewhere on the field 1,500 more. Two 
thousand Confederate prisoners were taken, over half 



584 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of whom were wounded. The total loss to the Fed- 
eral forces was 3,521 in killed, wounded, and missing. 
It was a tremendous, an irrevocable disaster, which 
Hood's second effort to depart from the cautious tac- 
tics of his predecessor in command had brought upon 
the Confederacy. 

The events of the next six weeks may be briefly 
passed over. Hood retired to his breastworks around 
Atlanta. They were among the most impressive 
examples of defensive works to be seen during that 
colossal war, in which Vicksburg, Petersburg, and 
even less famous positions were fortified in a manner 
that fairly eclipsed the historic Sebastopol. The Con- 
federate military engineers were masters of their art. 
Their plans were executed by gangs of slaves, who 
dug while the white men fought. 

Not wishing to dash his army against those for- 
midable works Sherman sat down and waited. While 
waiting he sent out cavalry parties to harry the coun- 
try. One of these was designed to release thirty-two 
thousand Federal prisoners cooped up in the dismal 
prison at Andersonville, where the toll of life was 
heavy and the sufferings of the prisoners without sufl^- 
cient shelter, on a tract of swampy land barely large 
enough for one-third their number, were pitiable in 
the extreme. But the effort failed and perhaps it 
was as well, for the commander of the prison had is- 
sued orders for the slaughter of the prisoners, if the 
raiding party came within seven miles of the post. 

Once again Hood attacked the foe he could not 
shake off. It was on the 28th of July, and again 
the Confederates were beaten back with heavy losses. 
General Sherman writes that the men of the Fifteenth 
corps, upon whom the attack fell most heavily, 
"spoke of It as the easiest thing in the world; that 
In fact It was a common slaughter of the enemy; they 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 585 

pointed out where the rebel lines had been, and how 
they themselves had fired deliberately, had shot down 
their antagonists whose bodies still lay unburied, and 
marked plainly their lines of battle, which must have 
halted within easy musket-range of our men, who 
were partially protected by their improvised lines of 
logs and fence-rails." 

There now followed a period of comparative quiet. 
Hood had had his fill of attacking Sherman, and 
clung stubbornly to his breastworks. His men, too, 
though their courage and their discipline made them 
respond quickly enough to every call to action, were 
disgusted with the rashness which hurled them against 
a foe well hidden behind breastworks. 

*' Well, Johnny, how many of you are there left? " 
asked a Union picket, soon after the affair at Ezra 
Church. 

" Oh, about enough for another killing," grimly and 
rather ruefully responded the Confederate addressed. 

Sherman brought up his heavy siege-guns and began 
bombarding the town. The great shells fell in every 
quarter of the city. Conflagrations started by the 
bursting missiles swept away whole blocks. The 
women and children took refuge in cellars, or in holes 
dug in their gardens and roofed over with boards and 
earth. " One thing is certain, whether we get inside 
of Atlanta or not, it will be a used-up community when 
we get through with it," was Sherman's promise to 
Grant. 

At last, a courier came galloping to Sherman with 
a message from General Slocum, who had been left 
in the trenches before Atlanta. It gave the tidings 
that the city had been evacuated, that Slocum had 
marched in without a fight, and was then in possession. 
When General Thomas heard the news he snapped 
his fingers, whistled, and almost danced with joy. 



586 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

The soldiers sang, cheered, and fired salutes. A 
courier was sent back to the nearest telegraph station 
to dispatch the good news to President Lincoln. 
" Atlanta is ours and fairly won," was the way in 
which Sherman announced his victory. The bells at 
Washington were rung and the cannon fired, while 
General Grant, to whom the tidings came as he was 
patiently besieging Lee at Petersburg, ordered that 
his triumphal salute should be fired " with shotted 
guns from every battery bearing on the enemy." 



CHAPTER XXVII 

In the Shenandoah Valley — Boy Soldiers at New Market — Early's 
Raid on Washington — Peril of the National Capital — Sheridan 
in the Valley — Battle of Winchester — Sheridan's Ride. 

Throughout the war the Shenandoah Valley was 
the scene of continual fighting, though at no time the 
stage for the operations of the main armies. It was 
the by-way by which Stonewall Jackson made his swift 
dashes to the Federal rear; the lane between the 
mountains by which Lee marched to Pennsylvania and 
the crushing disaster of Gettysburg. Level, fertile, 
well-watered, sheltered from rude winds by mountain 
ranges on either side, this smiling vale was made a 
very hell for four years by the warring hosts until 
at last Sheridan raged down it like a pest of locusts 
leaving it, in Grant's words, " so clear and clean that 
crows flying over it will have to carry their food with 
them." 

Until Sheridan came into the valley its story was 
one of ineffective and incapable Union commanders 
tricked, outmanoeuvred and outfought by the Con- 
federates. When Grant took command of the Army 
of the Potomac his grand strategy contemplated the 
advance of the Army of the James under General 
Butler, up that river toward Richmond, and one by 
Sigel up the Shenandoah Valley currently with the 
advance of the greater army upon Lee. Butler failed 
so completely that no account of his campaign is neces- 
sary. Sigel was equally futile in his endeavors as 
a commander. When Grant was in full action at 
Spottsylvania he received this telegram from Halleck 
which seems to sum up Sigel: "Sigel is in full retreat 

587 



588 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

upon Strasburg. He will do nothing but run; never 
did anything else." 

One action only of this campaign in the Shenan- 
doah Valley deserves mention, and that not because 
of its military importance, but because of the pic- 
turesque and pathetic character imparted to it by the 
presence in the Confederate lines of a battalion of 
boy soldiers. 

It was at New Market that General Breckenridge, 
who had charge of the Confederate defence of the 
valley, had determined to make a stand, and thither 
he had despatched all the troops which he could gather 
together. There were veterans from the army of 
Northern Virginia, hardy mountaineers from the 
craggy heights of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, 
the " reserves," — old men mustered from farms and 
factories, armed with shot-guns and hunting-rifles, 
and a compact well-drilled battalion of 225 cadets — 
smooth-faced boys, sixteen or seventeen years old, 
from the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, 

Lexington was the West Point of the South. There 
Southern boys were bred to the profession of arms. 
Stonewall Jackson was one of its professors. When 
the war opened its classes were crowded with gallant, 
ambitious youths. The necessities of the Confederate 
army, which forced into its ranks all male citizens 
above the age of eighteen years, had the effect of 
closing most of the colleges of the South, but the 
military school still retained a large class of students 
between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years. 
Naturally enough, there burned in the breasts of these 
lads a fierce desire to follow their elder brothers into 
the ranks of that army, which, to their eyes, was 
fighting for the defence of their country and their 
homes. 

Great, then, was the excitement among the cadets 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 589 

when they were roused from their slumbers at dead of 
night by the resonant rumbling of the long roll. Hur- 
riedly getting into their clothes, they " fell in " and 
answered to their names. Parade was formed, and 
in the black night the adjutant read by the fitful glare 
of a lantern the special orders, which set forth that 
at six o'clock in the morning the Cadet corps, pro- 
vided with three days' rations, should march to the 
support of Breckenridge at New Market. What 
shouts went up as the companies broke ranks and the 
boys scattered to make their preparations for taking 
the field! 

Then came the long march over muddy roads and 
through streams, the bridges over which had long 
since been sacrificed to the needs of war. It was a 
bedraggled but enthusiastic battalion of boys that 
finally marched into the camp of the veterans, who 
welcomed them first with lusty cheers, and afterward 
in a spirit of playfulness by singing " Rock-a-bye 
Baby," and tenderly inquiring whether they would 
prefer to have their coffins of rosewood, satin lined. 

Sunday morning. May 15, brought the hostile 
armies into collision. General Breckenridge did not 
want to give the boys their baptism of fire. " I do 
not wish to put the cadets in if I can avoid it," said 
he, " but if occasion calls, I shall use them freely." 
Occasion did call. In a distant meadow the guns of 
McLaughlin's battery were making deadly play on 
the Confederate advance. There were six guns and 
a regiment of infantry and the cadets were ordered 
to take them. Cadet John S. Wise, who afterwards 
won civil eminence in a Northern home, tells of the 
boys' triumphant charge: 

As our fellows came on with a dash, the enemy stood his ground 
most courageously. That battery, now charged with canister and 
shrapnel, opened upon the cadets with a murderous hail the moment 



590 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

they uncovered. The infantry, lying behind fence-rails piled upon 
the ground, poured in a steady, deadly fire. At one discharge poor 
Cabell, our first sergeant, by whose side I had marched so long, 
fell dead, and by his side Crockett and Jones. A blanket would 
have covered the three. They were awfully mangled with the 
canister. A few steps beyond, McDowell, a mere child, sunk to 
his knees with a bullet through his heart. Atwill, Jefferson, Wheel- 
wright fell upon the greensward and expired ; Schrivers's sword- 
arm dropped helpless to his side, and "C" company thereby lost 
her cadet, as well as her professor-captain. The men were falling 
right and left. The veterans on the right of the cadets seemed to 
waver. Ship, our commandant, fell wounded. For the first time 
the cadets seemed irresolute. Some one cried, " Lie down," and 
all obeyed, firing from the knee, all but Evans, the ensign, who 
was standing bolt upright. Poor Stannard's limbs were torn asunder 
and he lay there, bleeding to death. Some one cried out, " Fall 
back and rally on Edgar's battalion." Several boys moved as if to 
obey; but Pizzini, orderly of Company " B," with his Italian blood 
at the boiling point, cocked his gun and swore he would shoot the 
first man who ran. Preston, brave and inspiring, with a smile, lay 
down upon his only arm, remarking that he would at least save 
that. Collona, captain of " D," was speaking words of encourage- 
ment and bidding the boys shot close. The boys were being deci- 
mated ; manifestly they must charge or retire; and charge it was. 
For at that moment, Henry A. Wise, our first captain, beloved of 
every boy in the command, sprang to his feet, shouted the charge, 
and led the Cadet Corps forward to the guns. The guns of the 
battery were served superbly ; the musketry fairly rolled. The 
cadets reached the firm greensward of the farm-yard in which the 
battery was planted. The Federal infantry began to break and 
ran behind the buildings. Before the order " to limber up " could 
be obeyed, our boys disabled the trails and were close upon the 
guns; the gunners dropped their sponges and sought safety in 
flight. Lieutenant Hanna hammered a burly gunner over the head 
with his cadet sword. Winder Garrett outran another and attacked 
him with his bayonet. The boys leaped on the guns and the battery 
was theirs ; while Evans was wildly waving the colors from the top 
of a caisson. 

The loss to the Federals in the battle of New 
Market amounted to 93 killed, 522 wounded, and 
186 captured. The Confederates lost 42 killed, 522 
wounded, and 13 missing. Of the 225 cadets who 
went Into the action, 8 were killed and 46 wounded. As 
the lads had breasted the fiercest fire of the day, they 




(C) Ind.Twuiid A I iiiiiTw I \ 1 

COL. ROOSEVELT AND HIS ROUGH RIDERS 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 591 

were the heroes of the camp after the action; they 
mingled with the veterans on terms of perfect equality. 
There was no more singing of " Rock-a-bye Baby." 
Many of the prisoners were Germans, and they looked 
with wonder upon the boys who had helped to over- 
come them. " Dem leetle tevlls mit der vhite vlag 
vas doo mutch fur us," said one of the captives. 
" Dey shoost smash mine head ven I vos cry, ' Zur- 
render,' all der time," 

Sigel was soon relieved of his command in the 
Shenandoah and replaced by General Hunter, who 
pushed matters with more vigor. He had under his 
command about eighteen thousand men, and as, after 
the battle of New Market, Lee had recalled Breckin- 
ridge to the Richmond lines the Federals had it all 
their own way for a time. But their advance soon 
came to threaten Lynchburg, an important point in 
the defence of Richmond. Seeing that he had a more 
active leader than Sigel to contend with, Lee sent 
Breckenridge back to defend the threatened town. 
The Confederate success was immediate but was won 
not so much by force of arms as because Hunter was 
operating far from his base of supplies and was nearly 
destitute of rations and ammunition. There was 
nothing for him but flight. Instead of retreating 
straight down the valley to the Potomac, he turned 
off into the Kanawha Valley, which led through West 
Virginia to the Ohio. This left the road to the 
North, even to Washington, open to the grizzled 
veterans of Early's corps, who numbered among them 
the famous " foot cavalry " of Jackson. General 
Lee consented that Early move north and menace the 
National Capital; Early indeed thought he might take 
it, but Lee doubted this, expressing merely the hope 
that the threat would be enough to make Grant stop 
his merciless pounding of the Army of Northern Vir- 



592 



STORY OF OUR ARMY 



ginia and send some of his troops back to defend 
Washington. 

Early's men marched northward by the valley route 
which by this time had become familiar to most of 
them. At Harpers Ferry a great store of Union 
munitions of war was burned, at Hagerstown $20,000 
was collected, at Frederick, $200,000. By this time 
the North was panic-stricken again. Frederick is 
equally distant from Baltimore and Washington and 
connected with each by level roads. At Baltimore 
the banks sent their treasure North, and citizens be- 
gan concealing their valuables. At Washington Lin- 
coln called on the governors of nearby states for 
troops for the defence of the National Capital, and 
the department clerks were hastily armed and posted 
in the forts about the city. Only one armed force 
blocked Early's swift advance, that was about nine 
thousand men under General Lew Wallace, who held 
on the banks of the Monocacy River a position which 
covered both the Baltimore and the Washington roads. 
Wallace invited battle knowing well that he had no 
chance of victory. His part was to hold the enemy 
in check while the now thoroughly alarmed War De- 
partment rushed troops into Washington. This he 
did with a loss of 1,880 men, the Confederates losing 
about one-third as many. 

Yet the importance of the battle is to be measured 
neither by the numbers of the troops engaged nor by 
the extent of the losses. " General Wallace con- 
tributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops 
under him," writes General Grant, " a greater benefit 
to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander 
of an equal force to render by means of a victory." 

Early now marched on toward Washington. In 
the capital there was excitement and terror. From 
the War Department messages went speeding over the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 593 

wires to Grant at Petersburg. In the streets the com- 
panies of armed clerks and civilians, hastily mustered 
in, were marching toward the intrenchments. The 
wide circle of forts that surrounded the city needed 
a whole army for its defence, and even of the ill- 
disciplined troops in the capital there were not enough 
to garrison so extended a 'line. Everyone in the 
threatened city knew that, if it was to be saved, the 
means for its salvation must come from without. 
Help, however, was already on the way. Wallace 
had scarcely begun to fall back from the line of the 
Monocacy when the news was flashed over the wires 
to Grant. The remaining division of the Sixth corps 
was quickly withdrawn from the trenches and marched 
with all possible speed to City Point, on the James 
River. There they embarked on swift steamers that 
were in waiting, and sped down the James, around the 
point at Fortress Monroe, and up Chesapeake Bay 
and the Potomac to Washington. They arrived in 
the very nick of time. President Lincoln's tall figure, 
towering above the crowd that had gathered to meet 
them at the dock, told how anxiously they had been 
expected, while the booming of the big guns at Fort 
Stevens, which was already engaged with the enemy in 
the outskirts of the city, gave the most convincing evi- 
dence of the timeliness of the arrival. 

Early's troops had come within sight of the prom- 
ised land, but they were not destined to enter it. 
From the fields in which they halted on that hot July 
morning they could see the great unfinished dome of 
the National Capitol, dazzling white against the blue 
summer sky. The spectacle made enthusiasm con- 
quer, for the moment, the sufferings to which long 
and arduous service had made them a prey. They 
had been marching and fighting continuously for thirty 
days. The weather had been burning hot; no rain 



594 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

had fallen, and the dust rose in clouds, to choke the 
men in the marching columns. Even the creeks and 
smaller rivers had run dry, and it was difficult for 
the men to find water while on the march. The morn- 
ing which brought the invaders within view of the 
Capitol had been excessively hot, and the men were 
completely exhausted, throwing themselves upon the 
ground in attitudes showing the utmost weariness, 
whenever a halt was ordered. Yet Early determined 
to attack. He could not turn his back upon Wash- 
ington while he knew that city to be defended only 
by a slender force of half-disciplined militia and 
wholly undisciplined clerks. In imagination he saw 
himself master of the Federal Capital, and Grant 
turning away from his campaign against Richmond 
to rush to the defence of the cities of the North. 
Foreign intervention — that illusive hope which buoyed 
up the Confederacy when all chance of conquering the 
North by Southern arms alone had vanished — would 
surely follow. With these bright dreams playing 
through his mind, Early began making his dispositions 
for the attack, when a prodigious cheering from the 
Union lines told him that his golden opportunity had 
vanished. He knew too well that enthusiasm pro- 
claimed the arrival of reenforcements, and that even 
if he should be able to fight his way into Washington 
he would in all probability be hemmed in and unable 
to get out again. Men were too precious then in the 
Confederacy for him to think for a moment of ex- 
changing his army for the brief pleasure of unfurling 
the Stars and Bars above the Capitol at Washington. 
After a sharp engagement, in which President Lin- 
coln exposed himself on the Federal firing line, the 
Confederates withdrew, returning again to the Shen- 
andoah Valley. On the way a raiding expedition, 
led by General McCausland, dashed into Pennsylvania 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 595 

collecting great stores of cattle and provisions, and 
burning the town of Chambersburg in retaliation for 
a similar destruction of property in the Shenandoah 
Valley by Hunter. It was a cruel and wanton blow 
to the people of the little town, far removed from the 
theatre of war, but it was justified by the practices of 
war in that day, or to-day for that matter. 

In the end the raid was to cost the people of the 
valley dear. Grant was tired of having it made a 
pathway for expeditions of this nature. He saw that 
its very fertility and prosperity aided the Confederates, 
who were cheerfully supplied with food by the sym- 
pathetic farmers as they marched up and down the 
pike. To correct this situation he determined to make 
of the valley a desert, and intrusted the cruel task 
to General Sheridan. 

To carry a burning torch through the valley, ap- 
plying it to hay-ricks and corn-cribs and stacks of 
fodder; to drive off the milch cows and the fat beeves 
from the farms; to take the farmer's oxen, his plow- 
horse, and his family nag, these were the cruel duties 
intrusted to Sheridan. Cruel though they were they 
were justified by the military situation. War is al- 
ways cruel, and sometimes an effort to soften its hard- 
ships adds to its cruelties by increasing Its duration. 
It was Grant's duty to eliminate the Shenandoah Val- 
ley as a factor In the Confederate power. This he 
could do either by making it untenable for troops of 
any kind, or by filling It with Union regiments In such 
numbers that the Confederates could not hope to make 
any headway against them. The latter course would 
draw troops from the campaign against Lee, and thus 
greatly prolong the war. The former would occupy 
two corps for but a few weeks, after which the valley 
would be — so far as its strategic features were con- 
cerned — as though it never existed. 



596 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Sheridan entered upon his new duties with alacrity 
and enthusiasm. There had been some opposition to 
his appointment to so responsible a command on the 
score of his youth, and he was now fired with a deter- 
mination to show that though young in years, he was 
old in the qualities that go to make up the successful 
soldier. He soon had the fields in the lower part of 
the valley smoking with fumes of burning wheat and 
corn and hay. He made guerrilla warfare perilous, 
for once, when one of his lieutenants was shot down 
by bushwhackers, as it was supposed, Sheridan 
avenged the act by burning every house within five 
miles of the spot. Horses, cattle, and negroes — live- 
stock, all alike. In that day — were gathered up and 
driven into the Federal lines. Early in September 
Sheridan was able to write to Grant that he had " de- 
stroyed everything eatable south of Winchester, and 
they will have to haul supplies from well up toward 
Staunton." 

Sheridan was unique in one respect. He was a 
cavalryman who was both dashing and cautious, and 
the latter quality led him to avoid actual battle with 
Early until he heard that a part of that general's 
troops had been sent back to Lee at Petersburg. 
Then, after a consultation with Grant, who came 
over to the valley for that purpose, he determined 
to attack the Confederates. Early's spies informed 
him of Grant's visit to the valley and he was thus 
put on his guard. 

Soon after midnight on the morning of the 19th 
of September Sheridan's men were stirring in their 
camps. A hasty breakfast was prepared, and the 
underdone bacon and scalding coffee gulped down 
while preparations for the coming battle were being 
pushed forward. The cavalry was first on the road, 
and went forward through the Berryville gorge at a 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 597 

gallop. At daybreak the horsemen came suddenly 
upon a Confederate earthwork at the mouth of the 
gorge. Dismounting, and leaving their horses in 
charge of a detachment, the troopers charged, taking 
the enemy completely by surprise. The breastwork 
was carried, and many of its occupants only awoke 
to find themselves prisoners. Though the Confed- 
erates tried to retake the work, their efforts resulted 
only in the useless sacrifice of men. The success of 
the Union cavalry, however, proved to be somewhat 
in the nature of a misfortune for Sheridan. It gave 
the Confederates early warning of the battle, while 
the main attack did not follow for several hours, ow- 
ing to the difficulties encountered by the Union infan- 
try in moving to the front along a single narrow road 
through a difficult and rugged country. This delay 
gave opportunity for Early to concentrate his scat- 
tered troops, and when the main body of Sheridan's 
army went into action the enemy was united, well 
posted, and perfectly ready for the battle. Sheridan 
was disappointed, for he had expected to give battle 
to a dismembered army; yet he had come to fight, and 
fight he did. 

At noon, however, the main attack was made. 
The battle that followed was unusual in that neither 
side was intrenched and the fighting was mainly in 
the open. From the very first the Federals were 
successful, and while Early's veterans fought stub- 
bornly and fell back steadily and without panic, 
their defeat was decisive. At half-past one Early 
proclaimed a " noble victory for the South," but 
before nightfall he had given the order for a general 
retreat. 

" I never saw our troops in such confusion before," 
wrote a captured Confederate. " Night found Sheri- 
dan's hosts in full and exultant possession of much- 



598 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

abused, beloved Winchester. The hotel hospital was 
pretty full of desperately wounded and dying Con- 
federates. The entire building was shrouded in dark- 
ness during the dreadful night. Sleep was impossible, 
as the groans, sighs, shrieks, prayers, and oaths of 
the wretched sufferers, combined with my own severe 
pain, banished all thought of rest. . . . Our 
scattered troops, closely followed by the large army 
of pursuers, retreated rapidly and in disorder through 
the city. It was a sad, humiliating sight." 

The battle which had ended thus disastrously for 
the Southern arms is known, diversely, as the battle 
of Winchester and the battle of the Opequan. The 
loss upon each side was heavy. That of Early was 
about four thousand, and among his dead were Gen- 
erals Rodes and Godwin. Moreover, he left In the 
hands of the Federals five pieces of artillery and nine 
battle flags. The Union loss was heavier, closely ap- 
proximating five thousand men. 

The next day Sheridan was " after them " to use 
his own phrase and cut up badly two of the Confed- 
erate divisions, inflicting a loss of 1,400 men and 
taking sixteen cannon. For days the Union army 
hung on the flank and rear of the retreating Confed- 
erates, harassing them by constant attacks. Finally, 
giving up pursuit Sheridan turned again to his task 
of devastating the valley. But the simple work of 
destroying crops, standing or in the barns, and con- 
fiscating cattle was not permitted to engage his whole 
attention very long. 

Readers of the early chapters of this volume will 
remember that it was one of Washington's policies, 
after a defeat and a retreat to pull his troops to- 
gether, turn, and attack his victorious enemy. He 
always thereby restored the morale of his own men 
and often caught the foe napping in the fancied se- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 599 

curity of victory. Ea-ly must have studied Wash- 
ington's military methods with some profit. 

When Sheridan began his northward march after 
the battle of Fisher's Hill, he thought that he left 
behind a wrecked and demoralized army. He had 
no idea that, after the defeats sustained at Winchester 
and Fisher's Hill, Early would be able to take the 
offensive again. So far from dreading an attack, 
Sheridan fairly invited it by making preparations to 
send the Sixth corps back to Grant at Petersburg. 
But after the Sixth corps had begun its march, Sheri- 
dan's officers were startled by a huge shell which sud- 
denly dropped and exploded by the side of one of their 
mess tables as they sat at dinner. They sprang to 
their feet in surprise and terror, for none of them 
had suspected that any enemy was in the vicinity. 
Only the day before the cavalry had scoured the coun- 
try without discovering a sign of a Confederate 
soldier or a hostile flag. The scouting parties that 
were sent out to discover whence came the mysterious 
shell brought back a very different report. They found 
the woods full of Confederates, while the clouds of 
dust and of smoke that rose above the tree-tops 
showed that Early was present in force. This dis- 
covery led Sheridan to hastily send off couriers in pur- 
suit of the Sixth corps, and to bring that body of 
men back to the neighborhood of the rest of the 
enemy. 

Still Sheridan did not much believe that Early ac- 
tually meant to fight, and accordingly when Grant 
ordered him to send one division of cavalry out of 
the valley to threaten the Virginia Central railway, 
he cheerfully complied. As he desired to go to Wash- 
ington to consult with General Halleck, Sheridan ac- 
companied the cavalry — Merritt's division — as far as 
Front Royal. Here a courier overtook him with 



6oo STORY OF OUR ARMY 

startling news. The Union signal officers had seen 
flags waving from the Confederate signal stations. 
Being possessed of the enemy's signal code they had 
intercepted the message, which read: 

To Lieutenant-General Early : 

Be ready to move as soon as my forces join you, and we will 
crush Sheridan. 

LoNGSTREET, Liciit.-General. 

Put thus upon his guard, Sheridan ordered back the 
division of cavalry which he had intended to move 
from the valley. Yet he was so little alarmed that 
he concluded not to abandon his visit to Washington, 
and accordingly proceeded thither without delay. 

The intercepted despatch which thus warned the 
Union commander is one of the mysterious and 
hitherto unexplained incidents of the war. Long- 
street was not coming to Early's aid, and had sent 
him no troops. We shall see later that Early sus- 
tained a crushing defeat in a battle which there is 
every reason to believe would have resulted favorably 
to him, but for the despatch which had put the Fed- 
erals upon their guard. 

The fact was that the Confederates had come to 
a point at which with them it was a case of fight, 
abandon the valley, or starve. Sheridan's policy of 
devastation was having its effect and there was no 
longer forage left in the valley for so large a body 
of troops. Accordingly Early determined upon an 
attack and at night on the i8th of October, when the 
Federals were quite sure their foe was withdrawing 
from the valley, the Confederates were following a 
winding road along the base of the mountains to the 
Union rear. The surprise in the cold, foggy morning 
was complete. The Union troops rolled sleepily from 
their blankets to find the men in gray amongst them, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 6oi 

busy with pistol and bayonet. In fifteen minutes the 
whole Union corps commanded by General Crook was 
fleeing in panic. General Emory's command near by 
was demoralized by the rush of fugitives into its lines, 
and when the forces of Gordon and Pegram took it 
in the flank it, too, melted away. There remained 
only the Sixth corps, commanded by General Wright, 
to stay the triumphant onrush of the Confederates. 
They stood to their task bravely but would have been 
swept away like the rest save for an incident which 
has lived in poetry as well as in history under the name 
of "Sheridan's Ride." 

Returning from Washington Sheridan had reached 
Martinsburg where he was sleeping when an oflicer 
came to tell him that heavy firing in the distance could 
be heard. 

" It's only the reconnoissance in force which I or- 
dered for to-day," said Sheridan, and went back to 
bed to try to sleep a little longer. But despite his 
confident words to the officer he felt nervous, and after 
tossing about on his bed awhile, he rose and dressed 
and went out into the streets. The heavy concussions 
of the artillery made the air tremble, but Sheridan 
still thought that it did not indicate that a pitched 
battle was in progress. After breakfast he mounted 
his horse and with his escort of twenty troopers rode 
out of Winchester. By this time the noise of battle 
had so increased that the commander no longer 
doubted that the army was engaged, and spurred his 
steed to a swifter pace. The demeanor of the people 
of Winchester convinced him that they had received 
news from the battle field and that the fight was going 
against the Federals. When the little party of horse- 
men swung into, the road leading to Cedar Creek, 
stragglers began to be met, now singly, then in groups, 
and last in squads and whole regiments, and wagons, 



6o2 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

ambulances, the caissons of captured cannon, men 
riding horses with dangling traces, showing that the 
animals had been hastily cut loose from a gun-carriage 
to bear some panic-stricken driver to a place of safety 
— all this driftwood of a beaten and demoralized army 
so crowded the road that Sheridan and his followers 
had to take to the fields to make any progress. 

" My first halt was made just north of Newtown," 
writes Sheridan, in telling of his famous ride, " where 
I met a chaplain digging his heels into the sides of his 
jaded horse and making for the rear with all possible 
speed. I drew up for an instant and inquired of him 
how matters were going at the front. He replied, 
' Everything is lost; but all will be right when you get 
there'; yet notwithstanding this expression of con- 
fidence in me, the parson at once resumed his breath- 
less pace to the rear. At Newtown I was obliged to 
make a circuit to the left to get around the village. 
I could not pass through it, the streets were so 
crowded." 

" My God, General, I am glad to see you ! " cried 
General Torbert, when Sheridan came galloping up 
to the point where his cavalry and the Sixth corps 
were acting as a rear-guard for the retreat. A few 
questions told the newly arrived commander all that 
the stream of fugitives had left untold. He listened 
to the recital impatiently, then threw himself into the 
midst of the drifting tide. 

"Turn the other way, boys, turn the other way! 
We'll beat them yet! We are going to sleep in our 
old lines to-night," he cried, and the men, catching his 
enthusiasm, cheered and began to halt, and to face 
again to the enemy. 

" When they saw me," writes Sheridan, " they aban- 
doned their coffee, threw up their hats, shouldered 
their muskets, and as I passed along turned to follow, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 603 

with enthusiasm and cheers. To acknowledge this ex- 
hibition of feeling I took off my hat and with Forsythe 
and O'Keefe rode some distance in advance of my 
escort, while every mounted officer who saw me gal- 
loped out on either side of the pike to tell the men at 
a distance that I had come back. In this way the 
news was spread to the stragglers off the road, when 
they, too, turned their faces to the front and marched 
toward the enemy, changing in a moment from the 
depths of depression to the extreme of enthusiasm. 
I said nothing except to remark as I rode 
along the road, ' If I had been here with you this 
morning this would not have happened. We must 
face the other way. We will go back and recover 
our camp.' " 

Wonderful is the effect of a controlling mind upon 
a disorganized and panic-stricken body of men. The 
soldiers were soon shouldering their muskets and fall- 
ing into line. Order was beginning to appear where 
all had been confusion. The tide of men that had 
been flowing toward Winchester now turned and rolled 
toward the front. 

Reaching the front, Sheridan leaped his great black 
horse over the line of rails and rode along the crest 
of the hill, hat in hand, where all might see him. A 
thundering shout rang out from the Union lines as 
the men sprang to their feet and cheered and cheered 
again. All the color-bearers of Crook's stampeded 
army had formed a line, and their standards rose sud- 
denly before Sheridan's eyes and waved frantically. 

Early's next attack was repulsed, and the Confed- 
erate commander then abandoned his attempt to 
destroy the Union army, and bent his energies to the 
task of getting his prisoners and his long train of cap- 
tured wagons and artillery back to Fisher's Hill. But 
it was now Sheridan's turn to assume the offensive. 



6o4 STORY OFOUR ARMY 

He had a promise to redeem. His assurance to his 
soldiers, that they should sleep again that night in 
the Imes from which they had been driven in the morn- 
ing was no idle boast. Broken, demoralized, and 
panic-stricken, Early's well-ordered divisions were 
swept away. The twenty-four guns captured by the 
Confederates were recovered, and twenty-four more 
guns taken from them. All the ambulances lost in 
the morning were retaken, together with fifty-six be- 
longing to Early. All over the field the smoke was 
rising from wagons and ambulances, to which the 
fugitives had set the torch rather than permit them 
to be retaken. 

Sweeping and complete was the victory that Sheri- 
dan thus in the afternoon snatched from the defeat 
of the morning. Yet the loss in men fell heaviest on 
the Federals— nearly 4,000 of Sheridan's gallant fel- 
lows were shot down, while 1,770 were captured. 
Early's loss was slightly in excess of 3,000. 

There was but little further serious resistance offered 
to Sheridan in the valley as he pursued his work of 
devastation. The figures presented in his report of 
the destruction done between August 8, 1864, and 
the first of the following year, almost defy comprehen- 
sion. Among other things which he destroyed or cap- 
tured were 157,076 bushels of corn, 460,072 bushels 
of wheat, 51,380 tons of hay, 16,438 beef cattle, 
17,837 sheep, 16,141 swine, 12,000 pounds of bacon, 
and 140^ flour-mills. He found the valley a smiling 
and fertile dale; he left it a smoking and barren wil- 
derness. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Grant Moves to the South Side of the James — The Siege of Peters- 
burg — The Failure of the Mine — Widespread Union Successes — 
Lee's Attack on Fort Stedman. 

Two towns which, because of their railroad connec- 
tions, were keys to the Confederate territory occupied 
the attention of the Union armies in 1864. In the 
West Sherman spent the summer fighting his way into 
Atlanta. In the East General Grant gave up the 
same months to tediously attacking Petersburg by the 
toilsome processes of a siege. The latter town, to the 
south of Richmond, commanded one of the two rail- 
roads connecting the Confederate capital with the Con- 
federacy, and an army in possession of it could readily 
cut the other road and leave Lee's army no choice but 
starvation or surrender. In 1862 General McClellan 
had wanted to attack Richmond by way of Petersburg 
but was overruled by Halleck. But for that ruling 
the Capital of the Confederacy would have fallen two 
years earlier than It did, but whether that would have 
equally expedited the end of the war is doubtful. 
Petersburg, indeed, though finally captured, was the 
scene of several incidents of military inefficiency on the 
part of Federal commanders. Butler, who let his 
army be " bottled up " at Bermuda Hundred could 
have captured the town early in May, 1864, but failed 
to act though urged to do so by his corps commanders. 
Again when Grant determined to take the town In June 
of that year a delay of six hours In getting rations to 
Hancock probably prolonged the life of the Confed- 
eracy as many months. 

605 



6o6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

For about two weeks after the battle of Cold Harbor 
Grant allowed his army to rest quiet in the trenches, 
then began the hazardous flank movement to the south 
side of the James — a march of fifty miles, along narrow 
roads, through a wooded country and crossing two 
difficult streams, the Rappahannock and the James, by 
means of pontoon bridges. Grant appreciated the 
perilous nature of the movement and wrote afterwards, 
" The move had to be made and I relied upon Lee's 
not seeing my danger as I saw it." As a matter of 
fact Lee did not see it, and Grant's troops had been 
three days on the move before Lee's army started after 
them. In those days Petersburg was in dire peril. It 
was held only by the brigade of General Wise, about 
two thousand strong. Wise, for his part, pluckily set 
to work to make the best of the resources at hand. 
Fortunately for him the town was well provided with 
defensive works — at that time there was scarcely a 
strategic position in all the South that was not walled 
and fortified, ready for any emergency. Into the 
trenches Wise sent his regular troops and the " home 
guards " — the latter made up of boys too young for 
service in the army, and old men, gray-haired and de- 
crepit. Still, great gaps appeared in his line of de- 
fence. He went to the hospital and pressed into 
service all the invalided soldiers whose condition per- 
mitted them to carry guns. Thence to the jails, where 
he threw open the doors, put muskets in the hands of 
the prisoners, and bade them fight for their liberty. 
Then he went back to the breastworks to await the 
attack, hoping only that he might hold the Federals in 
check until help from Richmond could reach him. 

The first attack upon Petersburg was made by Gen- 
erals Gillmore and Kautz with about 4,500 men of 
whom 1,500 were cavalry, the clatter of whose horses' 
hoofs on a bridge across the Rappahannock put the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 607 

defenders on their guard. Gillmore, finding the Con- 
federates alert behind their breastworks, refused to at- 
tack. Kautz fought his way into the city, but could 
not hold it and withdrew. 

A week later the full division of General W. F. 
Smith, ordered forward by Grant, was before the works 
which were still but slenderly manned. For three 
days there was one almost continuous attack. It 
opened on the night of the 15 th with a heavy bom- 
bardment under cover of which the Union forces swept 
forward with a rush. A brigade of colored troops was 
in the van and fought with a gallantry that led the 
South to revise its estimates of their courage. A 
lodgment was made within the Confederate lines, and 
the gap thus opened could easily have been widened 
had Smith pushed the attack with fresh troops that 
came up about sundown. Unfortunately the battle 
was stopped for the night. Hancock, who arrived 
after nightfall, assumed command and ordered the re- 
sumption of the attack on the morrow. But the wound 
which he had received at Gettysburg was inflamed by 
his activity during the past few days, and made his 
presence in the saddle impossible. When he should 
have been animating his men and pushing forward the 
attack he was groaning on a bed of pain at headquar- 
ters. As a result, the attack lagged, and the day ended 
with no substantial advantage won. At nightfall 
Meade arrived and took command, Hancock leaving 
the army for a ten days' furlough. But while under 
the new commander the Federals captured some re- 
doubts and fought incessantly for thirty-six hours, the 
night of the i8th fell with Petersburg as strongly de- 
fended as ever. Grant then ordered a cessation of 
the attack. The Union forces had lost 10,586 men of 
whom 1,298 had been killed and 7,474 wounded. The 
Confederate loss was never definitely ascertained. 



6o8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

There followed a long and wearisome siege. Both 
armies worked hard with pick and shovel in full view 
of each other. Lee for his part would have liked to 
abandon Petersburg and Richmond as well, foresee- 
ing that Grant would soon cut off railroad communi- 
cation with the South — as in fact he did. But Jeffer- 
son Davis, putting political above military considera- 
tions, dreaded to thus discourage the South and vetoed 
Lee's suggestion. Perhaps, had it been adopted, it 
might have prolonged the life of the Confederacy a 
few months, but that was all, for by this time there 
remained no longer any doubt as to the issue of the 
conflict — the one doubt hung about how long that issue 
would be delayed and whether by fighting on the Con- 
federates would get better terms when the inevitable 
surrender came. When Lee settled down with dogged 
determination to defend Petersburg there was a presi- 
dential election pending in the North, with a great part 
of the Northern people very tired of the war which was 
costing $4,000,000 a day to prosecute, besides the heavy 
drain of men and toll of death. Probably the Con- 
federate authorities thought that military vigor shown 
by them at that moment might result in some agreement 
for ending the war. But they made no propositions 
to Washington nor were any forthcoming thence. 

The actual siege of Petersburg was begun on the 
1 8th of June 1864; it ended with Lee's withdrawal 
April 2d, 1865. Almost eight months were thus spent 
by an army twice the size of the defenders in wearing 
out Lee's veterans. When the end came Grant had 
122,000 men, well-fed, well-clad, and well-armed, to 
Lee's 57,000 starved and tattered men. Not only did 
the lesser force behind its breastworks hold the greater 
so long in check, but on one occasion it broke from its 
trenches and dashed madly upon the earthworks shel- 
tering the besiegers. In the main, however, the strug- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 609 

gle was one of engineers rather than soldiers. Grant's 
lines were pushed forward by parallels, zigzags, and 
formal approaches. Lee resisted with traverses and 
new redoubts. There were mines on the one side and 
counter-mines on the other. Of course, all the time 
the siege-guns were roaring and the sharpshooters on 
either side made life precarious, but there were but two 
days of hard-pitched battle — both disastrous to the 
side that invited the conflict. 

First of these combats was the bloody fiasco of the 
Petersburg mine. In the Union army was a regiment 
composed largely of Pennsylvanians who had been coal- 
miners. Its colonel, a civil engineer, was fascinated 
by the idea of sinking a mine under the enemy's works, 
exploding it, and rushing troops through the break 
thus made. He received grudging permission to carry 
out his plan. General Burnside alone of his superior 
ofl^cers manifesting any faith in it. 

His mining tools had to be extemporized. Cracker 
boxes bound with hoop-iron, were used to carry out 
the dirt, which was dumped at the mouth of the tunnel 
and kept carefully covered with brush lest some keen- 
sighted Confederate, descrying the growing mound of 
fresh earth, should suspect the subterranean attack that 
threatened their lines. Despite this caution, however, 
the enemy did discover what was being done. At first 
they began to meet it by sinking a counter-mine, but 
this was abandoned for lack of tools. Beauregard 
then contented himself with building a second line of 
works in the rear of that which he expected to be 
blown up, and studding It thickly with cannon trained 
so as to pour a concentrated fire upon the breach that 
would be made. Then the Confederate commander 
removed all save a few troops from the threatened re- 
doubt and calmly awaited the earthquake. 

For nearly a month the men of Pleasants's regiment 



6io STORY OF OUR ARMY 

burrowed in the earth. The tunnel in which they were 
working was scarcely five feet high, and the miners 
had to wield their tools lying down or stooped over in 
an awkward and wearisome posture. The difficult and 
tedious task of carrying out the excavated earth, a 
bushel at a time, in cracker boxes, still further pro- 
tracted the labor. Still, some progress was made. 
After four weeks of work the men in the mine could 
tell by the vibrations of the walls of their gallery that 
the enemy's heavy guns were at work directly above 
their heads. Sometimes, indeed, when the artillery 
duel was at its fiercest, the earth shook so that the dig- 
gers expected that at any moment their tunnel might 
cave in and bury them deep beneath the battle field. 
At last, however, the work was completed, and without 
any mishap. The subterranean chambers were charged 
with eight thousand pounds of gunpowder in kegs, con- 
nected by a long continuous fuse. 

At 3.30 o'clock in the morning of July 27 the Fed- 
eral troops were drawn up in line waiting for the roar 
of the explosion, which would be the signal for the 
attack. A long delay occurred, which could not be ex- 
plained until two plucky soldiers volunteered to enter 
the mine and discover its cause. They found that the 
fuse had gone out. Quickly relighting it, they made 
their way with all possible speed to the surface of the 
earth again. The minutes passed slowly while the 
dull red spark underground was crawling along the 
fuse to the first keg of powder. Suddenly a cry rose 
from the assembled host of soldiers. Before their 
straining eyes a great block of the Confederate works 
rose bodily, high in air, spread out like a tree at the 
top, and fell back in fragments with a roar that could 
be heard miles away. Fire and smoke shot upward 
with this column, and flames played weirdly about its 
crest, seventy-five or one hundred feet in air. Men, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 6ii 

cannon, gun-carriages, sand-bags, earth, in masses as 
large as a small house, and the finest floating dust, all 
rose with this terrible fountain. The ground shook, 
as with an earthquake, throwing down many of the 
men in blue that stood gazing. It seemed as though 
the flying debris would fall within the Union lines, and 
many of the ranks that were formed for the assault 
were broken in the panic. 

It was time now for the assault. The columns of 
blue should already have been pushing their way tow- 
ard the smoking crater. But an odd oversight delayed 
the attack. In the midst of their planning to get into 
the enemy's works it had never occurred to the Feder- 
als that they would find difficulty in getting out of their 
own. But now that the time had come to charge, they 
suddenly discovered that they were in deep trenches 
with lofty ramparts before them unprovided with 
sally-ports or means for climbing over. But the men 
extemporized ladders by thrusting bayonets between 
the logs and holding them while others used them as 
steps, by the aid of which they scaled the redoubt. 
Then, hastily forming on the colors, they rushed for- 
ward to the crater. 

" Little did these men anticipate what they would 
see on arriving there," writes Major Powell.* "An 
enormous hole in the ground, about 30 feet deep, 60 
feet wide, and 170 feet long, filled with dust, great 
blocks of clay, guns, broken carriages, projecting tim- 
bers, and men buried in various ways — some up to their 
necks, others to their waists, and some with only their 
feet and legs protruding from the earth. One of 
these near me was pulled out, and proved to be a sec- 
ond lieutenant of the battery which had been blown 
up. The fresh air revived him, and he was soon able 
to walk and talk. He was very grateful, and said 

♦"Battles and Leaders of the Civil War." 



6i2 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

that he was asleep when the explosion took place, and 
only awoke to find himself wriggling up In the air; 
then a few seconds afterward he found himself descend- 
ing, and soon lost consciousness. 

" The whole scene of the explosion struck everyone 
dumb with astonishment as we arrived at the crest of 
the debris. It was Impossible for the troops of the 
second brigade to move forward In line, as they had 
advanced; and owing to the broken state they were 
in, every man crowding up to look into the hole, and 
being pressed by the first brigade, which was immedi- 
ately in the rear, it was equally impossible to move by 
the flank, by any command, around the crater. Before 
the brigade commanders could realize the situation, 
the two brigades became irretrievably mixed. In the 
desire to look Into the hole." 

The Union attack was badly planned and worse 
executed. Instead of accompanying his men, or at 
least posting himself where he could see what was 
doing. General Ledlle Installed himself In a distant 
bomb-proof and directed the battle from reports. As 
a result he kept pouring new troops Into a great hole 
in the ground from which his regiments were already 
trying to escape. The sides of the crater were pre- 
cipitous. Either in attack or retreat the Union sol- 
diers were exposed to a pitiless hail of bullets from 
the Confederates on three sides of the crest of the 
crater. 

The morning was now more than half-spent and the 
sun stood high in the heavens. Its burning rays poured 
down pitilessly upon the fainting, bleeding crowd In 
the fatal pit. No air was stirring. The wounded 
were crying aloud for water and trying to moisten 
their dry and cracking lips with their parched tongues. 
The blood of the Injured, trickling down the steep 
sides of the hollow, had collected In little pools on the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 613 

bottom of hard red clay. The field before the crater, 
which division after division had vainly attempted to 
cross, was covered with the killed and wounded, both 
black and white, lying so thick, says Major Henzton, 
" that one disposed to be so inhuman might have 
reached the works without stepping on the ground." 

Matters were now coming rapidly to a crisis. The 
Confederates, not content with the results of their fire 
upon the men in the crater, were preparing to sally 
out and attack them. Their preparations were made 
in full view of those upon whom the blow was to fall, 
but out of sight of the artillerymen in the Union 
trenches. Accordingly, the attacking force formed with- 
out any interruption, and sallying forth, swarmed over 
the crest and down the sides of the crater. When the 
Confederates appeared the Union guns opened fire, but 
it was then too late. In a few moments the enemy 
was fiercely assailing the unhappy Federals, who, 
wearied by long exertions, and crowded together in 
that infernal pit of death, could offer but a feeble re- 
sistance. About eighty-seven officers, among them 
General Bartlett with his shattered cork leg, fell into 
the hands of the enemy, together with 1,652 men. 
The remainder fled to the Union lines, while the Con- 
federates soon sought their stronghold again. 

So ended in complete and bloody disaster the great 
adventure of the Petersburg crater. The loss to the 
Union army had been, according to General Meade's 
report, 4,400 men, of these over 400 being killed. 
The Confederate loss cannot be accurately determined, 
but was somewhat less, although there were 300 men 
in the exploded redoubt, most of whom must have 
perished. 

A competent military authority has described this 
battle as " the most discreditable to the Northern arms 
of all the battles of the war." General Grant says 



6i4 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of it: "The effort was a stupendous failure. It cost 
us about four thousand men, mostly, however, cap- 
tured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the 
corps commander and the incompetency of the divi- 
sion commander who was sent to lead the assault." 

In no whit shaken in their determination the Fed- 
erals settled down to the long winter's siege. Its 
monotony was lightened for the besiegers and made 
more depressing to the besieged by the continual re- 
ceipt of tidings of Union victories in the West. Sher- 
man had destroyed Atlanta and the daily record of 
his historic march to the sea was made public at Peters- 
burg to add to the discouragement of the Confederates. 
Hood's march into Tennessee, of which the South had 
expected great things, was met and decisively crushed 
by Thomas. In the cold famine-stricken trenches 
around Petersburg there could hardly have been a man 
ignorant in his heart that the Confederate cause was 
hopeless. The soldiers were half-clad and worse 
fed. The land had been so stripped by war that it 
was officially declared that there were not enough cattle 
left in all the fields of the South to furnish meat for 
the armies then in the field. Peace began to be talked 
of, and Confederate commissioners met representa- 
tives of President Lincoln at Fortress Monroe to dis- 
cuss terms. But Lincoln would listen to nothing short 
of the complete restoration of the Union. Davis in- 
sisted upon the separation of the warring sections. 
Nothing came of the negotiations and the war, which 
had become futile and criminal, went dully on. 

When the spring came, opening the roads and miti- 
gating the hardships of campaigning, Lee struck the 
first blow. He wished to get past Grant's left flank 
and withdraw his whole army from the Petersburg 
works, proceeding to join Johnston and demolish Sher- 
man. This might have been easily done earlier in the 



/r~ 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 615 

year, but by the time that Jefferson Davis gave his 
tardy assent to the movement Grant had so extended 
his Hnes to the left that It was more than doubtful 
whether Lee's forces could pass that way. To force 
the withdrawal of some of the troops from that point, 
Lee determined to attack the Union right flank. The 
point chosen for attack was Fort Stedman. At that 
point the hostile lines were scarce forty rods apart, and 
the ground between was hard and level, a most inviting 
field for a charge. 

The Confederate plan, however, did not contem- 
plate a direct assault. General Gordon, to whom the 
conduct of the sortie was Intrusted, had hit upon a 
plan for taking the Federals by surprise that in the 
end proved entirely successful. The Federals had 
long been employing every conceivable means to in- 
duce Confederates to desert. Circulars had been dis- 
tributed offering to pay each deserter who would come 
Into the Union lines bringing his musket with him. 
Gordon took a shrewd advantage of this. The pickets 
before Fort Stedman were not more than fifty yards 
in his front. He sent forward a number of stragglers 
with arms In their hands who proclaimed themselves 
deserters. The -pickets allowed them to approach 
without challenge, and were not enlightened as to the 
true character of these pretended deserters until they 
found themselves disarmed and on their way to the 
Confederate rear. With the pickets thus easily dis- 
posed of, the Confederates swept forward and were 
soon In possession of the coveted fort. But the men 
In the works to the left of Stedman which were included 
In Gordon's plan of attack had taken alarm, and when 
the Confederates turned to capture that stronghold 
also, they were met by a heavy and well-directed fire 
that drove them back in confusion. Even Fort Sted- 
man, which they had won fairly, they held but a little 



6i6 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

time, for while the Union batteries concentrated a 
deadly fire upon the fort, the troops of the Ninth 
corps attacked and retook it. Lee had lost four thou- 
sand men from his already feeble army, and the way 
around Grant's inflexible left flank still remained closed. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

Sherman in Atlanta — The March to the Sea — Rapacity of the 
Foragers — Capture of Atlanta — Hood Invades Tennessee — Bat- 
tle of Franklin — Battle of Nashville. 

During the months that saw the fighting at Cold 
Harbor and the siege and battles of Petersburg, his- 
tory was being made fast in the West and South by 
Sherman. We left that commander entering Atlanta, 
after a long and patient approach. If the people of 
that town had any lingering doubt after their long 
siege as to what war meant they were soon convinced 
that Sherman was to be taken literally when he de- 
clared, " War is hell." For that commander's first 
act was to expel all civilians from Atlanta, turning the 
captured town into a great fortified camp and military 
depot. There were not many places in the stricken 
South to which the dispossessed Atlantans could go, 
but go they must, and for days the roads leading south- 
ward were crowded with fugitives on foot, horseback, 
and in wagons. Soon the streets of the city presented 
a strange spectacle. Not a woman was to be seen, 
and hardly a man not clad in a blue uniform. The 
shops were closed and barred, the factories disman- 
tled, and the schools and churches were turned into 
hospitals and barracks. 

Sherman had no intention of staying long in At- 
lanta. Once the busy factories turning out munitions 
of war for the Confederacy were stilled, his chief 
purpose was attained. Restlessly he sought new fields 
to conquer and took up by wire with Grant that march 
to the sea, afterwards to be so widely celebrated in 

617 



6i8 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

song and story. Hood for a time delayed him by 
forcing a battle at Allatoona, and by taking a Confed- 
erate force northward into Tennessee, whose Union 
citizens raised such bitter cries of alarm that for a 
time Grant thought of sending Sherman back after 
him. Sherman, however, protested savagely and on 
November i, 1864, the coveted order came author- 
izing him to march. That very night, fearing a coun- 
termand, he set out. 

At the time, and long thereafter, this march of 
Sherman's was looked upon as the climax of audacity. 
1 o abandon his connections, tear up all railroads lead- 
ing to the North and safety, to lead an army of sixty- 
two thousand men straight into the enemy's country 
with rations only for a few days, sublimely confident 
that he could live upon the country, was hailed by the 
nation as unparalleled courage. True, it had been 
done by General Scott in his march upon the City of 
Mexico, but that the people had forgotten. True, too, 
the portion of the Confederacy which Sherman in- 
vaded proved to be an empty shell with nothing but 
scattered militia companies to bar his progress, but 
of that the people were ignorant. So the nation stood 
aghast while Sherman, sending all save effectives to 
the rear, and stripping his army to fighting weight, 
dropped from view and was as completely lost to the 
sight and knowledge of the North as though he had 
plunged into some vast cavern and was making a 
march through the mysterious chambers of the earth. 

The army which turned its back upon Atlanta and 
plunged boldly into the enemy's country was a remark- 
able one. Herculean efforts had been made to purge 
it of all non-combatants. Invalids, sutlers, servants, 
war correspondents, and all the host of camp-followers 
that hang upon the skirts of a great army had been 
relentlessly ordered to the rear. In all there were in 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 619 

line 62,204 men, all able-bodied veterans, ready to do 
and dare all that their leader might direct. In their 
cartridge-boxes were forty rounds apiece; in the ammu- 
nition wagons was enough powder and ball to make up 
two hundred rounds for each soldier. Stripped to its 
lightest, as it was, the wagon train of this army was 
formidable. Twenty-five hundred wagons dragged by 
teams of six mules each, six hundred ambulances with 
two horses apiece, and sixty-five cannon, to each of 
which were harnessed eight animals, made up a col- 
umn that, if extended along a single road, would have 
been over twenty miles long. As the army advanced 
by four nearly parallel roads, however, this train was 
broken up, and in each column a procession of wagons 
about five miles long held the centre of the road, while 
the troops trudged along on either side. Herds of 
cattle were driven along to furnish food for the army. 
The wagons held some quantity of food, — 1,200,000 
rations, or enough for twenty days, Sherman says, — 
but the chief reliance for food and forage for the 
horses and mules was to be placed upon the country, on 
which the leaders of the different columns were in- 
structed to forage liberally. 

Though not a holiday jaunt exactly, the march 
through Georgia was still so easy a task that, when the 
heads of the columns entered Savannah, the men were 
actually more robust and in better spirits than when 
they left Atlanta. The armed resistance that was 
offered to the progress of the columns was so slight as 
to afford only amusement to these grizzled veterans. 
Sherman had had a clear idea of what he had to ex- 
pect, when, before starting from Atlanta, he had told 
an officer whom he was sending back to join Thomas 
at Nashville, " If there Is going to be any fighting at 
all you will have it to do." Indeed the fierce words 
of the proclamations of Confederate governors, sena- 



620 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tors, and members of Congress were the principal weap- 
ons which the startled and demoralized people of Geor- 
gia employed against the invaders. 

Two tasks occupied the attention of the soldiers 
while on the march — foraging and tearing up rail- 
roads. The work of scouring the country for provi- 
sions was soon reduced to a science. 1 he twenty days' 
rations that were in the wagons when the army left 
Atlanta were held as a reserve store, only to be 
touched in case of dire need. Scarcely was the second 
day's march begun before the foragers had begun their 
work. About one-twentieth of each regiment was de- 
tailed upon this duty. The men scattered over the 
country in every direction, taking care to keep near 
enough together to be able to protect themselves 
against a sudden dash of the enemy's cavalry which 
hovered about the flank of the marching army. They 
started out at daybreak on foot, and returned at night- 
fall mounted on horses and mules, or driving wagons, 
carts, family carriages, or buggies heavily laden with 
all kinds of provisions. It was a sorry moment for a 
Georgia plantation when a party of Sherman's " bum- 
mers," as the foragers came to be called, descended 
upon it. Everything was seized by the insatiate ma- 
rauders. The barns and the coach-houses were first 
raided and every beast of burden and every vehicle 
seized — the barnyards received early attention, and 
the " bummers " soon became expert in running down 
and capturing chickens, ducks, and pigs. When every- 
thing eatable, and frequently a good many things that 
were not eatable, but which caught the fancy of some 
unscrupulous soldier, had been secured, the foragers 
would make their way back to the route of the main 
army and await the arrival of the wagons, into which 
their booty was poured. 

" Often would I pass these foraging parties at the 




Patriot Publishintr Co. 

FORT SUMTER IN RUINS, APRIL, 1865 
From "Photographic History of Civil War" 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 621 

roadside waiting for their wagons to come up," writes 
General Sherman, " and was amused at their strange 
collections — mules, horses, even cattle, packed with old 
saddles and loaded with hams, bacon, bags of corn- 
meal, and poultry of every character and description." 

Sometimes the foragers would appear clad in the 
gorgeous uniform of the Georgia militia, taken from 
trunks in some plundered plantation. Occasionally 
an old Revolutionary Continental uniform, after over 
half a century of fairly religious care and preservation, 
would be thus rudely dragged forth to bedeck the per- 
son of a " bummer." On one occasion several parties 
of foragers joined together and captured a town. The 
usual pillaging followed, and when the van of the main 
column came up the soldiers were astonished to be 
greeted by a procession of their comrades clad in Con- 
tinental blue and buff. In the midst of the cavalcade 
there progressed at a dignified pace a much-battered 
family carriage, laden with hams, sweet-potatoes, and 
other provisions, and drawn by two horses, a mule, 
and a cow, the two latter ridden by postilions. 

Sometimes the foragers had to fight for their plunder, 
for the Confederate cavalry hung close on the flanks 
of the Union column, ready to snatch up any unwary 
stragglers who might stray too far away. But in the 
pursuit of their adventurous calling the " bummers " 
soon learned to rally at the first note of danger, and 
to fight stubbornly while falling back slowly to the 
main line. In this way they not only protected them- 
selves, but interposed an impenetrable shield between 
the flank of the marching column and the enemy's 
forces. And though the duty of the foragers was more 
perilous than that of those who stayed with the main 
column, it had its compensations. More than one gar- 
den yielded up its buried treasures to their persuasive 
bayonets. Guided by the sly hints of slaves they ex- 



622 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

tracted jewelry and money from their hiding-places 
beneath cellar floors and behind oak wainscots. They 
lived on the fat of the land. Before the fruits of their 
foraging were turned over to their respective com- 
mands the cravings of their own appetites were fully 
assuaged. General Sherman tells of meeting one sol- 
dier who bore a ham impaled upon his bayonet, a jug 
of sorghum molasses under his arm, and a big piece 
of honey in his hand, which he was voraciously de- 
vouring. " Forage liberally on the country," re- 
marked the soldier, quoting meaningly from the general 
orders as he caught a reproving glance from Sherman. 
But the general stopped him to explain that foraging 
was not for the sole gratification of the foragers, but 
that the provisions thus obtained must be turned over 
to the regular commissaries. 

Before the invading column had penetrated very far 
into Georgia the immense concourse of negroes that 
gathered in its rear and followed it upon the march 
had become a source of serious annoyance. Despite 
the eftorts of planters the news of emancipation had 
spread among the slaves. To them the men in blue 
were saviors and protectors, all-wise and all-powerful, 
come to lead them from slavery into a better land and 
a better life. Their childish nature saw nothing to 
fear in the future. They did not trouble themselves 
about details, nor with problems of life, but simply 
caught up their scanty goods and chattels and followed 
the soldiers in great throngs. " Ise gwine whar youse 
gwine, Massa," was their invariable response to the 
soldier who asked them where they were going. Some 
of the able-bodied colored men were employed by Sher- 
man as pioneers and road-builders, but the greater 
number hung on the skirts of the army, begging their 
food of the soldiers and retarding the progress of the 
column," 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 623 

Early in December the invaders reached the vicinity 
of Savannah. There the Confederates had ralHed a 
handful of troops and thrown up defensive works, with 
the determination to hold the town against the Fed- 
erals. General Hardee commanded the defences. 
About eighteen thousand men were enrolled under him, 
and besides formidable earthworks, covering all the 
roads leading into the city, the Confederate flag waved 
over Fort McAllister, a very powerful work with 
lofty and ponderous bastions, spacious bomb-proofs, 
and deep ditches. Its fifteen cannon commanded the 
Ogeechee River, so that communication with the city 
by water was cut oft. 

Sherman pressed his way onward toward the city 
with all possible speed. For the last one hundred 
miles of his march forage was scarce, and it was es- 
sential that he should reach the coast, where well-laden 
supply ships were awaiting him, without delay. Be- 
sides, he knew that every day of delay was advanta- 
geous to Hardee, to whom recruits were flocking. 
" You-uns will have some fighting to do before you 
get into Savannah," said a Georgian, to whom a sol- 
dier was boasting of the ease with which the march 
from Atlanta had been made. 

Sherman first turned his attention to Fort McAllis- 
ter. With that work in his hands the problem of 
fixing a base of supplies on the seacoast would be 
solved, for vessels could ascend the Ogeechee to his 
lines, whether Savannah were taken or not. He knew 
that the vessels were lying at anchor out beyond the 
reedy marshes, the tortuous bayous and lagoons, and 
the gloomy and dismal swamps that intervened be- 
tween him and the open sea. He knew, too, that the 
men of the navy were expecting him, for the negroes 
told him that every night for a week past rockets had 



624 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

been sent up from the fleet, as though to attract the at- 
tention of friends on shore. 

Sherman sent General Hazen with his division to 
march down the right bank of the Ogeechee and carry 
Fort McAllister by assault. Though strong on its 
river front, the fort was weak to landward, and the 
Union commander believed it could be carried without 
heavy loss to the attacking force. He himself went 
down the opposite bank of the river to a point about 
three miles from the fort, where the Union signal offi- 
cers had built a platform on the ridge-pole of a rice 
mill. Sherman clambered up to this lofty eyrie and 
through his glass watched eagerly the progress of the 
column down the other side of the river. Occasionally, 
too, he cast an anxious glance out to sea, and his gaze 
in this direction was at last rewarded by the discovery 
of a faint cloud of smoke on the horizon and a small 
object which, as it rapidly approached, took on the 
form of a gunboat flying the Stars and Stripes. 

"Who are you?" was the signal waved from the 
deck of the vessel when she came within signaling dis- 
tance. 

" General Sherman," was the response, and then 
the signal officers began sending the order to Hazen, 
who was out of sight of the gunboat, to attack at once. 

*' Is Fort McAllister taken yet? " was the next im- 
patient inquiry from the gunboat. 

" No; but it will be in a minute," was the confident 
reply, for just at that instant Sherman saw Hazen's 
troops burst out of the fringe of woods before the fort, 
their colors flying, their lines regular, and the pace at 
which they advanced firm, even, and rapid. Then the 
great guns of Fort McAllister began to flash and to 
spout smoke and flame. The lines pressed sturdily on. 
Now the soldiers plunged into the midst of the lower- 
ing clouds of sulphurous smoke. Their forms could 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 625 

be seen but faintly, but the colors floating in the clear 
air above were plainly visible. One flag went down, 
but soon reappeared. Then the cannon flashes be- 
came less regular and rapid. The garrison was plainly 
weakening. The smoke was wafted away on the ocean 
breeze, and the eager watchers across the river could 
see the men in blue swarming over the parapet, waving 
their colors, firing their muskets in the air, and cheer- 
ing for a quickly won and important victory. 

With Fort McAllister fallen the surrender of Sa- 
vannah was only a question of time. Siege operations 
were difficult because of the marshy character of the sur- 
rounding country, and, though his batteries were close 
enough to make a bombardment effective Sherman dis- 
liked to resort to that with the town full of helpless 
women and children. While he was debating what to 
do word came to him that Hardee had slipped out of 
town by a pontoon bridge and a forgotten plank road 
leading into South Carolina. So Sherman was able 
to send President Lincoln a telegram on Christmas 
Eve, announcing, " As a Christmas gift the city of 
Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammu- 
nition." 

Sherman's march to the sea which won him such 
glory with so little hazard eclipsed altogether the 
vastly more difficult problem which he left behind and 
which was finally settled by General Thomas, " The 
Rock of Chickamauga." It will be recalled that when 
Sherman was preparing to leave Atlanta the Confed- 
erate General Hood with about fifty-four thousand 
men was marching northward into Tennessee much to 
the alarm of the people of that state. To meet him 
was General Thomas with about tweny-five thousand 
men left him by Sherman. As the latter commander 
had taken the pick of his army to make the march 



626 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

through the Confederacy it is reasonable to suppose 
that the men with Thomas were not of the first order 
of efficiency. Scattered in garrisons through Kentucky, 
Tennessee and Missouri were enough additional Union 
troops to bring Thomas's force up to that of his ad- 
versary if they could be concentrated before Hood 
could attack, the main army. To General Schofield, 
with about eighteen thousand men was delegated the 
duty of delaying the Confederates without bringing on 
a decisive battle, while Thomas, in Nashville, bent all 
his energies upon the task of gathering up the widely 
scattered commands. Schofield followed the same 
tactics in delaying Hood's advance upon Nashville that 
Johnston had employed in blocking Sherman's progress 
toward Atlanta. This time the North became as im- 
patient with the tactics of its general as the South had 
been with Johnston — and equally unreasonably. The 
one time when the regular record of retreat, intrench- 
ing, a flank movement by the enemy, and retreat once 
more was broken was at Spring Hill, Tennessee, where 
had Hood attacked promptly the Federal army would 
have inevitably been destroyed. But the Conjfederate 
leader let the opportunity slip, and though he tried to 
retrieve it, the next day, Dec. i, 1864, at Franklin the 
Federals there held too strong a position for him. 

Yet for a time the battle of Franklin looked serious 
for the Union cause. Schofield was caught before a 
swift deep river, without pontoons to bridge it, and 
with no possible way of retreat in the event of defeat. 
But the river that cut off his retreat also covered his 
flanks against the attacks of the enemy, and across the 
front the labor of ten thousand men threw up breast- 
works, and spread out obstructions making the path of 
the assailants a perilous one. Buildings in the town 
beyond the river were torn down and the timber used 
in erecting hasty bridges. A ford was discovered by 




THE BRIDGK AT PORANAQUE 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 627 

which the wagons and much of the artillery crossed, 
the guns being so posted as to bear on the enemy across 
the stream. 

When the foe did come it bade fair to sweep the 
whole of Schofield's force into the river. One of the 
staff officers of General Thomas writes of that fierce 
assault: 

The first shock came, of course, upon the two misplaced brigades 
of Wagner's division which, through some one's blunder, had re- 
mained in their false position until too late to retire without disaster. 
They had no tools to throw up works, and when struck by the 
resistless sweep of Cleburne's and Brown's divisions they had only 
to make their way, as best they could, back to the works. In that 
wild rush in which friend and foe were intermingled, and the 
piercing " rebel yell " rose high above the " yankee cheer," nearly 
seven hundred were made prisoners. But, worst of all for the 
Union side, the men of Reilly's and Strickland's brigades dared 
not fire lest they should shoot down their own comrades, and the 
guns, loaded with grape and canister, stood silent in the embra- 
sures. With loud shouts of " Let's go into the works with them ! " 
the triumphant Confederates, now more like a wild, howling mob 
than an organized army, swept on to the very works with hardly 
a check from any quarter. So fierce was the rush that a number of 
the fleeing soldiers, officers, and men, dropped exhausted into the 
ditch and lay there while the terrific contest raged over their heads 
till, under cover of darkness, they could crawl safely inside the 
intrenchments. 

Panic spread swiftly in the Union lines. Even 
veteran troops broke and fled. The roads to the 
bridges and ford were packed with fugitives. All 
seemed lost when Schofield's reserves, few in number 
but fresh and untouched by the battle, rushed into the 
works now tenanted by the Confederates and after 
fierce fighting drove them out. All the afternoon and 
late into the night the Confederates fought, trying to 
regain their lost advantage, but in vain. In the end 
the Union troops were withdrawn across bridges which 
had been building during the battle and the retreat to 
Nashville was continued. In the day's fighting Scho- 



628 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

field had lost 3,226 men, the Confederate assailants, 
6,300. 

A striking illustration of the neighborhood nature 
of the war in Tennessee was the experience of the Car- 
ter family whose farmhouse was within the battle 
lines. So suddenly burst the storm of war the people 
in the household had no time to flee, but took refuge in 
the cellar, where they crouched trembling while the 
shot and shell crashed through the timbers over their 
heads, and the din of the battle reverberated outside. 
When returning quiet gave assurance that the fight was 
ended, two of the women, bent on a merciful errand, 
came up from the cellar to give aid to the wounded. 
When they threw open the door, they found, lying 
across the step, their own brother, who was a staff 
officer in the Union army and who lay there with his 
life's blood ebbing away through a ghastly and mortal 
wound in his breast. 

Meantime in Nashville Thomas was busily drawing 
widely scattered regiments together, and painfully mak- 
ing soldiers out of new recruits. Throughout the land 
the people, accustomed to Grant's daily battles and 
exultant over Sherman's march, were crying, " Why 
doesn't Thomas fight?" Washington, ever responsive 
to public clamor, bombarded the unfortunate Thomas 
with criticisms, remonstrances, complaints, and orders 
for impossible attacks. Then Grant wrote an order 
removing Thomas from command and superseding him 
by Schofield. But the order was recalled from the 
telegraph office and another written appointing Logan 
to succeed Thomas. With this order in his pocket Lo- 
gan started West to deliver it. A few hours later 
Grant, desperately worried, left the Army of the Po- 
tomac and followed Logan. But before either had 
gone very far both heard news that stopped their prog- 
ress. 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 629 

The 14th of December, the day Sherman reached 
the sea, dawned clear and sunny at Nashville. The 
sunshine dissipated the depression in the Union army 
as it did the clouds in the sky. This was what all had 
been waiting for. The soldiers scarcely needed any 
orders to tell them that, if the weather held, a battle 
would be fought within twenty-four hours. The or- 
ders came, however, and at the same time a telegram 
went speeding over the wires to Washington. " The 
ice having melted away to-day, the enemy will be at- 
tacked to-morrow morning." 

Long before dawn the Union camps were all astir. 
The men were giving the last touches to their equip- 
ments, eating a hasty breakfast, and chatting of the 
chances of the fight. There were many raw recruits 
in the ranks, and they listened with respect to the vet- 
eran's stories of battles lost and won. It was a warm, 
moist morning, and a heavy curtain of fog hung over 
the field, under cover of which the Federal troops 
moved out to their positions unperceived by the enemy. 
By nine o'clock, however, the mist cleared away, and 
heavy bodies of blue troops could be seen advancing 
at all points of the field. The Confederate cannon 
quickly burst forth with a full-throated roar, and the 
yellow gunpowder smoke filled the air, from which the 
fog had vanished. There was hot skirmishing and a 
fierce exchange of cannon-shot for some hours. The 
advance of the Federals was slow but uninterrupted. 
The enemy was driven everywhere. Now a stone- 
wall, then a lightly fortified line that he attempted to 
hold, was wrested from him. Three four-gun redoubts 
were taken by storm. The troops of General Chal- 
mers were driven so fast that his headquarters train 
with all his baggage and papers was captured. 

This is the story of the taking of one redoubt, as 
told by Colonel Stone, an eye-witness: " Post's brigade, 



630 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of Wood's old division, which lay at the foot of Mont- 
gomery Hill, full of dash and spirit, had since morn- 
ing been regarding the works at the summit with covet- 
ous eyes. At Post's suggestion it was determined to 
see which party wanted them most. Accordingly, a 
charge was ordered, and in a moment the brigade was 
swarming up the hillside straight for the enemy's ad- 
vanced works. For almost the first time since the 
grand assault on Missionary Ridge, a year before, here 
was an open field where everything could be seen. 
From General Thomas's headquarters everybody 
looked on with breathless suspense as the blue line, 
broken and irregular, but with steady persistence, made 
its way up the steep hillside against a fierce storm of 
musketry and artillery. Most of the shots, however, 
passed over the men's heads. It was a struggle to 
keep up with the colors, and as they neared the top 
only the strongest were at the front. Without a mo- 
ment's pause the color-bearers and those who had kept 
up with them. Post himself at the head, leaped over the 
parapet. As the colors waved from the summit, the 
whole line swept forward and was over the works in 
a twinkling, gathering in prisoners and guns. Indeed, 
so large was the mass of the prisoners that a few min- 
utes later was seen heading toward our own lines, that 
a number of officers at General Thomas's headquarters 
feared the assault had failed, and the prisoners were 
Confederate reserves who had rallied and retaken the 
works. But the fear was only momentary; for the 
wild outburst of cheers that rang across the valley told 
the story of complete success." 

It was now night. Everywhere the Confederates 
had suffered heavily. Their lines had been pierced in 
many places, and many of their men were captives in 
the hands of Thomas's troops. They had been forced 
back by successive assaults until, at night, they in- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 631 

trenched a line two miles in the rear of that which they 
had held in the morning. All night they had worked 
with their intrenching tools, and the early dawn was 
ushered in by the opening roar of the Union cannon 
heralding another day of battle. 

Shattered and disheartened though they were, the 
Confederates fought gallantly on this second day of 
the fight. They beat back a desperate assault led by 
the dashing Colonel Post, who fell sorely wounded at 
the head of his men. They shot down and drove off 
three regiments of colored soldiers who hazarded a 
daring assault. But there came at last a charge which 
the men of the South could not withstand. McMil- 
len's brigade swept up the steep and rocky hillside be- 
fore Bates's division, just as two cannon which some 
dismounted cavalrymen had with infinite labor dragged 
to the crest of a high hill opened a galling fire upon 
the Confederate rear. The double attack disconcerted 
the defenders of the redoubt, and they broke and fled 
ingloriously. McMillen's men, who had reached the 
redoubt without firing a shot, now poured deadly vol- 
leys into their backs. Hatch's dismounted cavalry 
came dashing in with more volleys. In an incredibly 
short space of time the green hillside was covered with 
frantic men fleeing for their lives. Cannon were aban- 
doned, muskets and colors thrown aside, artillerists cut 
the traces and galloped away on the battery horses, 
the prayers and entreaties of ofl'icers were unheard. 
Hood no longer had an army; it had become an undisci- 
plined and affrighted mob. 

The Union troops pressed remorselessly upon their 
stricken antagonists. Post's brigade charged again 
over the ground where it had once suffered a repulse, 
and captured 14 guns and 1,000 prisoners. Sted- 
man's negro soldiers also won their share of trophies. 
The Confederate General Johnson and nearly all his 



632 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

division were captured. Night brought the retreating 
Confederates no relief. The Union cavalry still cut 
and slashed their trains and their straggling columns. 
In the morning the main body, taking up the pursuit, 
found the road littered with burnt and wrecked wagons, 
discarded arms, wounded, dying and dead Confeder- 
ates, and all the debris of a wrecked and despairing 
army. The pursuit was pressed to the banks of the 
Tennessee River. When it ended General Thomas 
had in his hands 4,500 prisoners, including four general 
officers, and 53 pieces of captured artillery. His loss 
amounted to 3,057 men, of whom less than 400 were 
killed. The extent of Hood's loss has never been 
known. Greatly as his army suffered from the casual- 
ties of battle, it suffered still more from wholesale 
desertions; for during that disorderly retreat hundreds 
and even thousands of the soldiers concluded that the 
life of that army and the fortunes of the Confederacy 
were at an end, and they dispersed to their homes, 
never again to be forced to take up arms. 

It was the news of this great victory that met Logan 
at Louisville on his way to relieve Thomas from com- 
mand. He stopped short in his journey and tore up 
his orders, for the nation was shouting again for 
Thomas, as when he saved the day at Chickamauga. 












Wi':^ 




CHAPTER XXX 

The Confederacy Tottering — Burning of Columbia — Lee Evacuates 
Petersburg — Richmond Captured — The Surrender at Appomat- 
tox — End of the War. 

Regarding the closing days of the Civil War from a 
viewpoint fifty years later one is impressed by the 
dogged tenacity of the South in fighting, without out- 
ward sign of discouragement, until the last minute, and 
amazed at the hesitation with which the North recog- 
nized the triumph which it had won. We can see now 
that the doom of the Confederacy was fixed when 
Grant became the commanding general of the Union 
armies. Perhaps it was sealed at Gettysburg, though 
there is a possibility that a succession of weak and 
hesitating commanders of the Army of the Potomac 
even after that crushing defeat might have enabled 
Lee to prolong the conflict to the point of European 
recognition of the Confederacy. But Grant's con- 
viction that continued pounding, even at the cost of an 
occasional defeat, would wear away the irreplaceable 
substance of the Confederate army, and his command 
to Sherman to pursue a like policy in the West marked 
the inexorable end of the Confederate hopes. 

When Sherman entered Savannah, Grant and Lee 
were still confronting each other in the icy trenches 
around Petersburg. The last act in the great drama 
was to be staged there, but before the curtain rose upon 
it many lesser scenes were played in widely separated 
sections. Over these we may pass hurriedly for they 
had little bearing on the final document. There was 
the combined military and naval attack on Fort Fisher 

633 



634 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, a victory which 
later was chiefly famous because there " Fighting Bob " 
Evans, a popular hero during the Spanish War, received 
his first wound. Then Charleston fell, evacuated on 
the 1 8th of February, 1865, and the Confederate flag 
was hauled down from Fort Sumter which had been 
battered into a mere shapeless mass of bricks and mor- 
tar. The same day Sherman's army, which had begun 
a northward march to form a junction with Grant, 
entered Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. 
While the Union troops were in possession of this little 
town it was burned to the ground, and out of that 
calamity grew much recrimination and bitterness of 
spirit, for the Southerners declared that Sherman had 
ordered its destruction. That officer always stoutly de- 
nied this charge, and it was proved that the cotton in 
the town and two railroad bridges had been fired by 
the retreating Confederates, from which the general 
conflagration might readily have sprung. But there 
is no doubt that Union soldiers urged it on. 

Sherman's junction with Grant was destined never 
to be effected — or needed. Jefferson Davis, alarmed 
by the prospect, recalled from retirement the South's 
ablest strategist. General Joseph E. Johnston, and put 
him in command of the forces opposed to Sherman; 
but, though the Federal commanders looked on John- 
ston's return to active service with apprehension born 
of respect for his ability, the appointment was made 
too late. The time had come when Lee's army could 
no longer stand Grant's pitiless pounding, and when 
that great bulwark of the Confederacy went down all 
the rest fell with it. 

Immediately after the futile attack on Fort Sted- 
man Grant began active operations intended to cut 
off the railroads which linked Lee's army to the South 
and brought provisions and reenforcements to the Con- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 635 

federate camps. At Dinwiddie Court House and at 
Five Forks, Sheridan at last pierced the Confederate 
lines which had hitherto stood like adamant. At the 
Union headquarters there was wild rejoicing over the 
tidings. Only Grant, the imperturbable, gave no sign 
of exultation but after writing half a dozen despatches 
went to his tent saying, " I have ordered an immediate 
assault all along the lines." That was shortly after 
midnight Sunday morning, April 2, 1865. Before 
dawn the assault was in progress. Everywhere the 
Union forces swept the disheartened Confederates 
from their works. Thousands of prisoners were 
taken. General A. P. Hill, who had fought by Lee's 
side since the war opened and whose name was last on 
the lips of the dying *' Stonewall " Jackson, was killed. 
Disaster followed disaster so rapidly that the Confed- 
erates were soon in complete rout, drifting aimlessly 
along toward Appomattox. 

There was panic in Richmond that bright April 
morning. It was Sunday, and the Confederate Presi- 
dent, Jefferson Davis, was in church. Through the 
open windows the sound of the cannon booming on 
Lee's lines came floating in. Though the people in 
the congregation knew that the day could not be far 
distant when their city must fall before the tireless 
energy and boundless resources of the Northern army, 
they had become so accustomed to looking upon Lee's 
army as invincible that they felt no present dread of 
disaster. Though the department clerks and the home 
guards had been hurriedly summoned to the front, that 
gave the citizens no concern, for that had happened 
often before and still no Northern soldier had trodden 
the city's streets, save as a prisoner. The last news 
that had come from the front had told of General 
Lee's sortie and capture of Fort Stedman. The Rich- 
mond papers had carefully suppressed the news of the 



636 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

recapture of the work, and the worshippers, who heard 
that Sunday morning the heavy notes of the cannon 
rising over the sound of the singing and the preacher's 
reverent voice, thought that perhaps Lee was making 
another sortie and winning new laurels for the Con- 
federacy, 

In the midst of the service a heavy step caused the 
congregation to turn to stare at the intruder. Up the 
middle aisle to President Davis's pew strode a courier, 
booted and spurred. He handed Mr. Davis a sealed 
official dispatch. " It is absolutely necessary," so ran 
the fateful dispatch, " that we should abandon our 
position to-night, or run the risk of being cut off in the 
morning." 

The Confederate President rose and walked quickly 
out of the sanctuary. Under his cold and impassive 
face he hid the knowledge that the day of the fall of 
Richmond had at last arrived. That terse dispatch 
from the leader of the Confederate forces "told the 
story of the hopelessness of the situation, and Mr. 
Davis and other officials high in the Confederate 
service made hasty preparations for flight. 

The news spread fast through the city. Panic 
seized upon the people. Everybody -who had money 
spent it in securing the means of escape from the town 
— fleeing from they knew not what. All day long the 
wagons and carts rumbled through the streets and over 
the bridge. The railroads were taxed to their utmost, 
and even the canal was used as an avenue of escape for 
those who believed that all sorts of atrocities would 
accompany the entry of the Federal troops to the 
town. As night came on, knots of ill-visaged men be- 
gan to come out from the slums of the city. Liquor 
flowed freely, and robberies were of frequent occur- 
ence. Next day the panic was still wilder. Not one- 
tenth of the people who had determined upon flight 




/ 







^Z 









= ^ o 



1:3? 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 637 

could escape by the railroad, and the roads and lanes 
leading from the town were jammed by throngs of ex- 
cited men, tearful women, and crying children. The 
streets resounded with the crash of glass and the sound 
of splintering doors, for the mob was at work, and 
store after store was pillaged. The Confederate 
troops had gone. Only a rear-guard of cavalry re- 
mained, to which was intrusted the work of burning the 
bridges and the great tobacco warehouses. The Con- 
federate officer whose duty it was to set the torch to 
the bridge, after the last gray-clad troops had crossed, 
writes: * 

I hurried to my command, and fifteen minutes later occupied 
Mayo's bridge, at the foot of Fourteenth Street, and made military 
dispositions to protect it to the last extremity. This done, I had 
nothing to do but listen for sounds and gaze on the terrible splen- 
dors of the scene. And such a scene probably the world has never 
witnessed. Either incendiaries, or, more probably, fragments of 
bombs from the arsenals, had fired various buildings, and the two 
cities, Richmond and Manchester, were like a blaze of day amid the 
surrounding darkness. Three high-arched bridges were in flames ; 
beneath them the waters sparkled and dashed, and rushed on by 
the burning city. Every now and then, as a magazine exploded, a 
column of white smoke rose up as high as the eye could reach, 
instantaneously followed by a deafening sound. The earth seemed 
to rock and tremble as with the shock of an earthquake, and 
immediately afterward hundreds of shells would explode in the air 
and send their iron spray down far below the bridge. As the 
immense magazines of cartridges ignited, the rattle as of thousands 
of musketry would follow, and then all was still for the moment, 
except the dull roar and crackle of the fast spreading fires. At 
dawn we heard terrific explosions about "The Rocketts," from the 
unfinished iron-clads down the river. 

By daylight on the 3d a mob of men, women, and children, to 
the number of several thousands, had gathered at the corner of 
Fourteenth and Cary streets, and other outlets, in front of the 
bridge, attracted by the vast commissary depot at that point ; for 
it must be remembered that in 1865 Richmond was a half-starved 
city, and the Confederate government had that morning removed 
its guards and abandoned the removal of the provisions, which was 

* Captain Clement Sullivan, in " Battles and Leaders of the 
Civil War." 



638 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

impossible for the want of transportation. The depot doors were 
forced open and a demoniacal struggle for the countless barrels 
of hams, bacon, whisky, flour, sugar, coffee, etc., etc., raged about 
the buildings among the hungry mob. The gutters ran whisky, and 
it was lapped as it flowed down the streets, while all fought for 
a share of the plunder. The flames came nearer and nearer, and at 
last caught in the commissariat itself. 

The people of Richmond who remained in the city 
to confront its conquerors soon discovered that they 
had to fear no violence either to their persons or prop- 
erty. The men of the North treated the people of 
this captured city, for which they had fought for four 
long and bloody years, with consideration, even with 
kindness. A sort of sense of poetic justice impelled 
the Federals to send a brigade of colored troops first 
to take possession of the town. The citizens looked 
askance at these dark-faced blue-clad men — lately 
their slaves, now their conquerors — but their counte- 
nances changed when they saw these blacks join heartily 
in the work of extinguishing the flames which the re- 
treating Confederates had left behind them. This 
was no easy task, and a great part of the city was 
sacrificed. Soon after the occupation of Richmond, 
President Lincoln came to see the city for which the 
armies of the nation had so long striven. It was his 
only taste of triumph, for before the last army of the 
Confederacy had surrendered, and a free flag waved 
again over a single nation from Maine to the Rio 
Grande, the President was dead, struck down by the 
cowardly hand of a frantic assassin. 

Meantime Lee was still retreating, closely pursued 
by Grant, who hung remorselessly upon the skirts of 
his antagonist's army, never losing an opportunity to 
strike a blow, and fairly wearing out the Confederates 
by the merciless pertinacity of his pursuit. Lee's 
army was fast going to pieces because of its own 
internal weakness. The men knew well enough that 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 639 

the end was nigh, and desertions were of hourly oc- 
currence. Worn out by fatigue, and weak because 
of insufficient food, hundreds of stragglers lagged 
behind the column and were cut off by Grant's alert 
cavalrymen. Sheridan's troopers made many dashes 
into the Confederate column, cutting out prisoners and 
guns and burning wagons. Every hour was a reverse 
for the men who followed Lee; every day a dire 
disaster. 

The line of the retreat lay to the westward, Lee 
naturally trying to effect a juncture with Johnston's 
army at Danville. This it was the effort of Grant 
to prevent, and the two armies marched in parallel 
lines. There were occasional collisions when the lines 
came in contact, some of which rose to the dignity of 
actual battles, like that at Sailor's Creek, where Custer 
broke the Confederate lines, capturing four hundred 
wagons, sixteen guns, and many prisoners. Custer's 
success was scarcely won when the Sixth corps came 
up and supplemented it by taking prisoners the whole 
of Ewell's corps, together with the commanding offi- 
cer himself, and four other general officers. Yet both 
armies understood that the fate of this campaign was 
to be settled chiefly by the walking powers of the 
contestants. If Grant could bar Lee's path before 
he reached Johnston, the fate of the Confederacy 
would be determined then and there. A lucky stroke, 
by which Sheridan captured a provision train upon 
which the Confederates had relied, forced them to 
halt a day to scour the surrounding country for 
forage. As a result, when, a day or two later, Lee 
reached Appomattox Court House, he found his path 
barred by a long line of dismounted cavalry. The 
Confederate veterans advanced confidently to sweep 
these out of their way, but recoiled in dismay when 
the cavalrymen, falling back, disclosed a solid rank 



640 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of blue-clad infantry, and the gleaming muzzles of 
many cannons. The cavalry, which had screened this 
formidable force, were now seen to be massing on 
the Confederate flank for a charge. Then a white 
flag fluttered in front of the tattered gray lines, and 
the last collision between the gallant but unfortunate 
Army of Northern Virginia and the no less gallant 
Army of the Potomac was over. " I had 'em. like 
that," said Sheridan some hours later, clinching up 
his fist to show how he had held Lee's battle-scarred 
veterans in his clutches. 

The display of a flag of truce, which had checked 
Sheridan's assault, was followed by a message telling 
him that General Grant and General Lee were in 
conference concerning a surrender, and asking for an 
armistice until the result of that conference could be 
determined. For two days the two chieftains had 
been exchanging notes relative to a surrender, and at 
the very moment when Sheridan brought the Army 
of Northern Virginia to bay, they sat face to face 
in a parlor of Colonel McClean's house, in Appo- 
mattox Court House. The results of that meeting 
were so momentous and its incidents revealed so much 
true nobility in the character of the Union commander, 
that the graphic and trustworthy account of an eye- 
witness, General Horace Porter,* may be given in part. 

The contrast between the two commanders was striking, and 
could not fail to attract marked attention, as they sat ten feet 
apart, facing each other. General Grant, then nearly forty-three 
years of age. was five feet eight inches in height, with shoulders 
slightly stooped. His hair and full beard were a nut-brown, with- 
out a trace of gray in them. He had on a single-breasted blouse, 
made of dark-blue flannel, unbottoned in front, and showing a 
waistcoat underneath. He wore an ordinary pair of top-boots, with 
his trousers inside, and was without spurs The boots and portions 
of his clothes were spattered with mud. He had had on a pair of 

* " Battles and Leaders of the Civil War." 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 641 

thread gloves, of a dark-yellow color, which he had taken off on 
entering the room. His felt sugar-loaf, stiff-brimmed hat was 
thrown on the table beside him. He had no sword, and a pair of 
shoulder-straps was all there was about him to designate his rank. 
In fact, aside from these, his uniform was that of a private soldier. 
Lee, on the other hand, was fully six feet in height, and quite 
erect for one of his age, for he was Grant's senior by sixteen years. 
His hair and full beard were a silver-gray, and quite thick, except 
that the hair had become a little thin in front. He wore a new 
uniform of Confederate gray, buttoned up to the throat, and at 
his side he carried a sword of exceedingly fine workmanship, the 
hilt studded with jewels. . . . His top-boots were new, and 
seemed to have on them some ornamental stitching of red silk. 
Like his uniform they were singularly clean and but little travel- 
stained. On the boots were handsome spurs, with large rowels. 
A felt hat, which in color matched pretty closely that of his uniform, 
and a pair of long buckskin gauntlets lay beside him on the table. 

The subject of the surrender was brought up and 
there was some general talk about the prospects of 
peace. " Lee was evidently anxious to proceed to 
the formal work of the surrender, and he brought the 
subject up again by saying: 

" ' I presume, General Grant, we have both carefully 
considered the steps to be taken, and I would suggest 
that you commit to writing the terms you have pro- 
posed, so that they may be formally acted upon.' 

" ' Very well," replied General Grant, ' I will write 
them out.' And calling for his manifold order-book, 
he opened it on the table before him and proceeded 
to write the terms. The leaves had been so prepared 
that three impressions of the writing were made. He 
wrote very rapidly and did not pause until he had 
finished the sentence ending with ' officers appointed 
by me to receive them.' Then he looked toward Lee, 
and his eyes seemed to be resting on the handsome 
sword that hung at that officer's side. He said after- 
ward that this set him to thinking that it would be 
an unnecessary humiliation to require the officers to 
surrender their swords, and a great hardship to de- 



642 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

prive them of their personal baggage and horses, and 
after a short pause he wrote the sentence: 'This 
will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor 
their private horses and baggage.' " 
The letter was as follows: 

General R. E. Lee, Commanding C. S. A. 

General: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you 
of the 8th instant, I propose to receive the surrender of the Army 
of Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit : Rolls of all 
the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given 
to an officer to be named by me, the other to be retained by such 
officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their 
individual paroles not to take up arms against the government of the 
United States until properly [exchanged] and each company or 
regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their 
commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked 
and stacked, and turned over to the officers appointed by me to 
receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, 
nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and 
man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by 
the United States authorities so long as they observe their paroles 
and the laws in force where they may reside. 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. 

" Lee took it and laid it upon the table beside him, 
while he drew from his pocket a pair of steel-rimmed 
spectacles and wiped the glasses carefully with his 
handkerchief. Then he crossed his legs, adjusted the 
spectacles very slowly and deliberately, took up the 
draft of the letter and proceeded to read it attentively. 
When Lee came to the sentence about the 
officer's side-arms, private horses and baggage, he 
showed for the first time during the reading of the 
letter a slight change of countenance, and was evi- 
dently touched by this act of generosity. It was 
doubtless the condition mentioned to which he par- 
ticularly alluded when he looked toward General 
Grant, as he finished reading, and said with some 
degree of warmth in his manner: 'This will have 
a very happy effect upon my army.' 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 643 

" General Grant then said, ' Unless you have some 
suggestion to make in regard to the form in which I 
have stated the terms, I will have a copy of the letter 
made in ink and sign it' 

" ' There is one thing I would like to mention,' Lee 
replied after a short pause. ' The cavalrymen and 
artillerists own their own horses in our army. Its 
organization in this respect differs from that of the 
United States.' This expression attracted the notice 
of our officers present, as showing how firmly the con- 
viction was grounded in his mind that we were two 
distinct countries. He continued: 'I would like to 
understand whether these men will be permitted to 
retain their horses? ' 

" ' You will find that the terms as written do not 
allow this,' General Grant replied; 'only the officers 
are permitted to take their private property.' 

" Lee read over the second page of the letter again, 
and then said: 

" 'No, I see that the terms do not allow it; that 
is clear.' His face showed plainly that he was quite 
anxious to have this concession made, and Grant said 
very promptly and without giving Lee time to make 
a direct request: 

" ' Well, the subject is quite new to me. Of course 
I did not know that any private soldiers owned their 
animals, but I think this will be the last battle of the 
war — I sincerely hope so — and that the surrender of 
this army will be followed soon by that of all the 
others, and I take it that most of the men in the ranks 
are small farmers, and as the country has been so 
raided by the two armies, it is doubtful whether they 
will be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and 
their families through the next winter without the aid 
of the horses they are now riding, and I will arrange 
it in this way: I will not change the terms as now 



644 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

written, but I will instruct the officers I shall appoint 
to receive the paroles to let all the men who claim 
to own a horse or mule take the animals home with 
them to work their little farms.' 

" Lee now looked greatly relieved, and though any- 
thing but a demonstrative man, he gave every evidence 
of his appreciation of this concession, and said, ' This 
will have the best possible effect upon the men. It 
will be very gratifying and will do much toward con- 
ciliating our people.' " 

The terms of the surrender settled, Lee rose to go. 
Suddenly thinking of the utter destitution of his men, 
he turned to General Grant saying that he held more 
than a thousand Union prisoners whom he had no 
way of feeding and would send them into the Union 
lines. Indeed, he pleaded that he was without suf- 
ficient provisions for his own soldiers. Had he but 
known it, his destitution was even more complete than 
he supposed, for the night before Sheridan had cap- 
tured all his supply trains near Appomattox Station. 
General Grant at once volunteered to send over 
twenty-five thousand rations — so sadly had the Army 
of the Potomac shrunken — and greatly relieved the 
Confederate commander turned to the door. 

As he stepped out into the yard and stood waiting 
for his horse, the Union officers, of whom there were 
many lounging about, sprang to their feet and doffed 
their caps respectfully. The higher officers who had 
been in the council chamber came out on the piazza 
of the McLean house and, following General Grant's 
example, lifted their hats in a silent salute as the 
white-bearded Confederate, followed by his solitary 
aid, rode off toward his crushed and sorrowing army. 

A strange and unaccustomed quiet hung over the 
camps of the armies lately hostile that night. The 
Confederates, depressed and down-hearted, were silent 




(g) riul.TwooU jt tiiderwood- N. Y. 



OUR SOLDIERS ENTERING MALOLOS 




I'lKlprwcMid A Lad. r".i...i, N. Y 

AMERICAN FIRING LINE AT MALOLOS 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 645 

In their tents. They crowded about him who had so 
long been their leader, and listened respectfully to the 
few quiet words in which he bade them go to their 
homes and pursue the vocations of peace " until ex- 
changed." They knew well enough that there would 
be no exchange; that their cause was now a lost cause, 
and that they would pever bear arms again. It was 
quiet, too, in the Union lines. When the news of the 
surrender became known the men cheered and danced 
in triumph, and the artillerymen made the country 
resound with the roar of triumphant salutes. But in 
the midst of the enthusiasm came an order from Gen- 
eral Grant. " The war is over," said he. " The 
rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of 
rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all 
demonstrations in the field." A noble and a mag- 
nanimous heart spoke there ! 

How swiftly the closing scenes in the great drama 
of the Civil War followed each other. It seemed 
that the Confederacy was like one of those glass toys 
of the scientist that crumble to powder if their points 
be broken. Once Lee's lines were broken, all was 
over. When a report of his army was made it was 
found that he had left him scarce eight thousand 
men capable of bearing arms. This pitiful force had 
been all that stood between the Confederacy and col- 
lapse. Once it was out of the way the remaining 
armed forces of the Confederacy were surrendered. 
Johnston heard the tidings and gave up his army to 
General Sherman without seeking to prolong the strug- 
gle. There then remained but one organized Con- 
federate army in the field — that of General Kirby 
Smith in the far Southwest. But to Smith, too, came 
the tidings of the annihilation of the Confederate 
military strength, and his colors were furled and his 



646 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

guns thrown down. May 27, 1865, saw no longer a 
single regiment in the field fighting to overturn the 
National authority. 

One man alone remained irreconcilable. Jefferson 
Davis, as he fled southward from Richmond, spread 
on every hand appeals for a continuation of the war 
at whatever odds. His proclamations scorned the 
very thought of failure. He would have the people 
of the South carry on a guerrilla warfare. He would 
have such soldiers as still remained with arms in their 
hands take to the mountains and there fight a de- 
fensive war for years. Blind to the desire of the 
Southern people for peace, deaf to the protests of his 
officers, who saw that further resistance was hopeless, 
he clung to his determination to prolong the conflict. 
At last he was overtaken in his flight by a detachment 
of United States cavalry, and the President of the 
Confederacy was captured while seeking to escape in 
the garments of a woman. 

It was in the midst of the triumph of the nation, 
when every day and every mail brought tidings of 
some fresh victory for the National arms, some new 
sign that the effort to disrupt the Union was effectually 
withstood, that the shot was fired by Wilkes Booth 
which struck down the great and wise leader who had 
guided the nation through the storm of war. The 
murder of Abraham Lincoln was a crime that shocked 
Christendom. It was a deed that revolted even the 
men against whom his every thought and deed had 
been directed for more than four years. The South 
sorrowed for him. The Southern leaders, mindful 
of the fact that an enraged public sentiment would 
probably charge them with complicity in the assassina- 
tion, hastened to declare their abhorrence of the crime. 
It is well to set down once again the verdict of history 
which acquits the leaders of the " Lost Cause " and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 647 

the Southern people, as a people, of all complicity in 
this execrable assassination. 

The long and sanguinary war which covered the 
country with battle fields and with soldiers' cemeteries 
has not been barren of results for the nation. It 
taught the South that the despised " Yankees " could 
fight when occasion arose. It taught the North the 
Southerners were not mere braggarts. It silenced the 
sneers of Europe by demonstrating that Americans 
were not merely a " nation of shop-keepers." If it 
showed that Americans could fight bravely, it showed, 
too, that they could forgive nobly. Fifty years of 
peace have healed the wounds of war. No bitterness, 
no malice remains. Purged of the great evil of 
slavery, united in every part by social and commercial 
ties, discharging with unprecedented rapidity the enor- 
mous debt which four years of war piled up, the 
Republic is to-day greater, stronger, and more pros- 
perous than ever. No cloud appears upon its horizon. 
Those who for base purposes would stir up war-time 
animosities daily grow fewer. Honored in the con- 
gress of nations, seeking no quarrels, and dreading 
no foe, the United States seem to be entering upon a 
period during which the triumphs of peace shall fairly 
outdo the victories won on the battle fields of the 
Union. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

The Dispersal of the Army — War with Spain Causes New Organ- 
ization — Its Grave Weakness — The Santiago Campaign — The 
Porto Rico Campaign. 

The United States learned but slowly — perhaps I 
might better say has never learned at all — the lessons 
which war should have taught of the need for military 
preparedness in time of peace. The dissolution of 
the army followed swiftly upon the peace. For a time 
a considerable force was concentrated in Texas under 
General Sheridan, in order, by this demonstration of 
power, to hasten the withdrawal of the French troops 
from Mexico where they were maintaining the pre- 
tensions of Maximilian to be Emperor of that coun- 
try. This accomplished, and Maximilian left to his 
fate by France and later shot to death by the wrath- 
ful Mexicans, the million volunteers that had been 
gathered during the war were gradually mustered out 
and returned to their homes. The regular troops 
were scattered through the South to maintain order, 
and later to aid in that work of " reconstruction " 
which, it is the almost unanimous testimony of the 
Southern people, proved more wearing and more 
disastrous than the war itself. Undoubtedly the part 
the regulars had forced upon them by politicians in 
this work added somewhat to the old-time dislike of 
the American people for a standing army. Two years 
after Appomattax the regular force had been reduced 
to 53,692, the largest number of regulars on the rolls 
in time of peace since 18 14. But the cry for retrench- 
ment was loud, and Congress passed one law after 
another still further reducing the force. In 1869, it 

648 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 649 

was cut to 34,000; in 1870, to 30,000; in 1874, to 
25,000 and at that figure it remained until the eve of 
the war with Spain. Even though several " war 
scares " attracted the attention of the American people 
to their military unpreparedness, no effort was made 
to correct it, and we went gaily up to the moment of 
the declaration of war with Spain with an army nu- 
merically contemptible, and which the supreme test 
showed to be ill-organized, ill-equipped, and utterly 
wanting in efficient leadership or staff efficiency. 

In 1895 Cuba, always more or less insurgent against 
Spanish rule, had developed so effective an insurrec- 
tion that Spain had been obliged to send an army of 
nearly 220,000 men across the Atlantic to restore 
order. At no time did the insurgents have more than 
25,000 men under arms, but their activity, and 
the barbarity of the measures which the Spanish 
General Weyler employed for their repression 
wrought public opinion in the United States up to a 
high degree of sympathy for their cause. While the 
administration at Washington was steadfastly resist- 
ing the popular demand for intervention, the United 
States cruiser, " Maine," which lay at anchor in the 
harbor of Havana, was treacherously blown up on the 
night of February 15, 1898. By this action more 
than 250 American sailors and marines were slain. 
Public sentiment then could not be restrained and on 
April 28, 1898, Congress passed a resolution declaring 
war with Spain. 

This war was destined to be fought mainly upon 
the ocean.* Most fortunate indeed It was for the 
United States that this was so, for while our navy 
at that time was by no means a match for that of any 
first-class power, it was at least superior to that of 

♦Its story is told in " Blue Jackets of '98 " by Willis J. Abbot, 
Dodd, Mead & Co. 



650 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Spain. Our army, however, was not in numbers, 
equipment, or experience equal to that of the Span- 
iards, and unprejudiced students admit that it was for- 
tunate for us that the decisive battles were fought at 
sea. Not that the ultimate results would have dif- 
fered. Our material resources and the fact that we 
were fighting Spain mainly in Cuba, near to our base 
and far from hers, made the outcome inevitable. But 
had the real battle of Santiago been dependent upon 
Shafter's troops instead of Sampson's and Schley's 
ships, the story of the Spanish War could not have been 
told in a chapter or two. 

Immediately upon the declaration of war the Presi- 
dent issued his first call for 125,000 volunteers from 
states and territories in proportion to the population 
of each. The number was raised practically among 
members of the organized militia. Congress also 
authorized the increase of the regular army to 62,597, 
the creation of a volunteer brigade of engineers, and 
an additional force of ten thousand volunteers, who 
were to be immune from " diseases incident to tropical 
climates." A second call for seventy-five thousand men 
admitted some specially organized military bodies. 
Of these, the most picturesque was the First Volun- 
teer Cavalry, which soon came to be known as Roose- 
velt's Rough Riders, though its first colonel was 
Leonard Wood, who at the time of his appointment 
was an army surgeon. Theodore Roosevelt resigned 
the post of assistant secretary of the navy to become 
its lieutenant-colonel. In the end Wood became a 
major-general commanding the army of the United 
States while Roosevelt became Governor of the State 
of New York, Vice-President, and finally President of 
the United States. 

The troops gathered by the various calls and en- 
listments were concentrated at several camps of in- 




GENERAL NELSON A. MILES 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 651 

struction at Savannah, Mobile, Jacksonville, and 
Chickamauga, where less than half a century 
before the fathers of many of these raw recruits 
had grappled in the fratricidal struggle between the 
North and the South. Hardly one-tenth of the men 
thus encamped ever saw active service or heard a gun 
fired in anger. But this by no means implies that they 
were exempt from all the pains and penalties of war. 
During a long peace the sanitary department of the 
army had suffered from disuse, like the rest, and the 
liberal infusion of politics into the conduct of the 
war did not help to make it more efficient. The con- 
centration camps were badly located, some where no 
water was to be had, others where the air was mias- 
matic. They were badly planned, with faulty sanitary 
arrangements. Through them typhoid fever and 
other epidemic diseases stalked, spreading sickness and 
death on every hand. In the decisive battle of the 
navy before Santiago, the army in the siege of that 
city, and the navy at Manila Bay, the total loss was 
less than that of the number of deaths in the concen- 
tration camp at Chattanooga alone, where perfect 
sanitation should have obtained, and deaths from 
that or any other " filth disease " should have been 
practically unknown. 

Tampa, Florida, was the site of the chief concen- 
tration camp, as it was from that port that it was 
planned to despatch the expedition against Cuba. 
Here by the end of May was concentrated the Fifth 
army corps, numbering in all about sixteen thousand 
men under the command of Major-General Shafter. 
The general and his staff were confronted by a 
problem, new not alone to them, but to practically all 
the military authorities. Not since the Mexican War 
had it been necessary to load an army on transports, 
convey it by sea to an enemy's country, and land it in 



652 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

the face of a hostile force. And had the difficulty of 
embarking an expedition of sixteen thousand men 
been properly studied, it is not likely that the port 
chosen would have been one reached by only one 
Ime of single-track railroad, almost destitute of yard 
and switching facilities— a port where good drink- 
mg water was a marketable commodity and where 
the burning sun sapped men's vitality and quickly 
rumed supplies. The secretary of war, Hon. Rus- 
sell A. Alger, himself said in June: "I do not 
believe that there ever was a nation on earth that 
attempted to embark in a war of such magnitude, 
while so utterly unprovided with everything necessary 
for a campaign." 

The wait at Tampa was long and wearisome, forced 
on the troops partly by delay in getting arms and 
equipment, partly by the fact that the Spanish fleet 
under Cervera was at sea, its whereabouts doubtful, 
and the risk of sending an army to sea in transports 
even under naval convoy too great to be taken. But 
after delay and more than one false start the Fifth 
army corps under General Shafter was fairly em- 
barked at Tampa. The expedition numbered 16,072 
men and 815 officers, and filled 32 troop-ships. 

About twelve miles east of the harbor's mouth of 
Santiago, where the great gray ships of Admiral 
Sampson lay watching for the appearance of Cer- 
vera, a long iron pier juts out into the sea. The 
place is called Daiquiri and from the landward end 
of the pier roads penetrate the dense jungle toward 
the Cuban city. Here Shafter determined to land his 
army, and on the 2 2d of June the landing was begun, 
the Spaniards curiously enough offering no resistance. 
General Garcia, leader of the Cuban insurgents, had 
about four thousand men encamped in the vicinity, 
and as cooperation with his forces was desirable a 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 653 

conference was held prior to the disembarkation. It 
was a picturesque gathering under the palms and at 
the time may have seemed trivial enough but it helped 
to remake the map of the world. 

General Garcia himself was absent when the camp 
was reached, and his officers vied with each other in 
their efforts to contribute to the comfort of the visiting 
officers until he could be summoned. They had little 
In their scanty commissary stores to offer, but all they 
had was pressed upon the visitors with almost pa- 
thetic insistence. Cocoanuts, limes, pineapples, man- 
goes, and coffee were about the scope of the list of 
Cuban delicacies in Garcia's camp, and while the new 
arrivals were devouring these in a hut thatched with 
palm-leaves and looking down to the sea, there was a 
stir without, and Garcia came. The Cuban general 
was straight and gaunt of frame, dark and grizzled of 
face, with white hair, a flashing eye, and, carved deep 
in his forehead, a bullet wound marking his effort to 
kill himself once when, a prisoner in Spanish hands, 
he sought rather certain death than the mercy of his 
captors. His dark face was set off by a heavy white 
moustache and imperial giving him a pronounced re- 
semblance, one of the spectators noted, to Caprivi, the 
German chancellor and successor to Bismarck. He 
wore a linen uniform and high military boots, with a 
slouch hat. However uncouth the exigencies of a 
starveling commissary might make his troops appear, 
Garcia was always in dress the officer and the gentle- 
man. It may be said that this scrupulous neatness in 
dress was a characteristic as well of most of the Cu- 
ban officers of elevated rank. Contrasted with the 
spare form of the Cuban leader was the ponderous 
Shafter, a very leviathan of a man in the sober blue 
garb of a United States major-general. Admiral Samp- 
son, in immaculate white duck, slight and turning gray, 



654 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

made the third in a trio of figures destined to become 
historic in the annals of the western hemisphere. 

When the American troops were landed their con- 
dition was hardly less serious than when they were 
afloat. Sixteen thousand men were on the beach with 
one day's rations. Everything pertaining to the ex- 
pedition — artillery, ammunition, rations, ambulances, 
medical stores — was packed away without any system 
on thirty ships, afloat without anchorage, on an un- 
protected coast in a season of high winds, even hurri- 
canes. The ships were chartered vessels, their cap- 
tains acknowledging no obedience to General Shafter, 
and he was weak enough not to enforce his authority. 
As a result, fearing wreck, some of the ships lay off 
the shore as far as ten miles, greatly increasing the 
delay in landing their cargoes. Nobody knew in what 
ship any particular article was packed. Eager 
searchers for medical supplies were liable to find only 
mess pork or ammunition for machine guns. 

Good fortune saved the army from annihilation. 
A hurricane driving the ships far to sea would have 
left the army starving and helpless before the Spanish 
forces. General Shafter himself admits that despite 
the favorable weather, " it was not until nearly two 
weeks after the army landed that it was possible to 
place on shore three days' supplies in excess of those 
required for daily consumption." But Providence, 
which seems to have followed the flag from the first, 
was faithful. The weather remained fair and the 
Spaniards rested quiet in their trenches waiting for the 
Americans to get quite ready for the attack. 

Shafter determined to move his forces into the in- 
terior and attack the Spaniards from the landward 
side. This strategy was admittedly more difl'icult 
than moving down the beach and operating under the 
guns of the fleet. But Shafter had been ordered to 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 655 

take the town, and capture the Spanish army, and the 
latter order could only be obeyed by getting between 
the Spaniards and the way of escape into the interior. 
This duty, however, imposed upon his army severe 
hardships and exposed it to disaster which was nar- 
rowly averted. 

The expedition was mainly composed of regular 
troops, the only volunteer organizations being the 
Second Massachusetts, the Seventy-First New York, 
and the First Volunteer Cavalry, or " Rough Riders,' 
the latter serving on foot, having left their horses in 
Florida. These troops were concentrated about Dai- 
quiri and Siboney. From the latter point two roads 
pierced the jungle toward Santiago. On the night of 
June 23d the Rough Riders were ordered to proceed 
by one road to the junction of the two at Guasimas; 
about a thousand regulars with four Hotchkiss guns. 
The men went gaily along roads bordered with jungle 
so dense that the usual precaution of throwing out 
flankers and skirmishers was wholly neglected. Among 
the Rough Riders there was apparent no concern over 
the fact that they were in the heart of the enemy's 
country. " I could hear the men nearest me," writes 
Colonel Roosevelt, " discussing not the Spaniards but 
the conduct of a certain cow-puncher in quitting work 
on a ranch and starting a saloon in a New Mexican 
town." And Edward Marshall, a correspondent who 
was desperately wounded in the first skirmish, writes 
of this general picnic demeanor. 

These volunteers had been so long in preparation, so many 
weary days had elapsed since they first buttoned their uniforms 
over hearts beating with tremendous primary patriotic enthusiasm, 
that now they were taking things calmly, and talking about dogs 
and the imperfections of army shoes. One man persistently blew 
paste balls at his neighbors. (Two hours later I saw him lying 
livid and dead in the high grass. He had been hit by a different 
kind of missile.) Spaniards and fighting seemed as far away to 



656 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

them as the cities of Asia Minor do to the school-boy studying 
geography, they had been carrying idle guns and ammunition so 
long. Indeed, it was hard for any of us to realize the actuality of 
the enemy. 

" ! Wouldn't a glass of cold beer taste good?" said 

one, whereupon others threw pebbles and sand at him for suggesting 
such an impossible ecstasy. There was much good-humor. 

The storm, which might have been expected but 
was not, broke first upon Capron's troop of Rough 
Riders. From some unseen point the Spaniards 
opened fire with Mauser rifles, a weapon vastly su- 
perior to any with which our troops were then pro- 
vided, and of such penetrative power that they would 
cut through a palm-tree and still be deadly. The at- 
tack fell first on Capron's men. Sergeant Fish fell 
at the first fire, shot through the heart. " It would 
be just my luck to get put out in the first fight and see 
nothing of the war,' he had said at Tampa. Captain 
Capron, a gallant young soldier of a family of soldiers, 
found in that volley his death-warrant. Next day 
his father left for a brief time his battery before the 
Spanish lines, and came over to where the body of 
his son lay on the rank grass. He looked a moment 
on the still features, then stooped and kissed the icy 
face. "Well done, boy, well done! " was all he said 
as he went back to the battle. 

The regulars were engaged a little time later than 
the volunteers, and the battle grew sharp. It was 
fought without any plan or definite purpose, having 
been brought on indeed by accident. In the public 
prints of the day, indeed, in books destined to possess 
some measure of permanence, its story filled a place 
far disproportionate to its importance. But, it was 
the first time American soldiers had been in battle with 
a foreign foe since the Mexican War. Among the 
victims were young men of social prominence, while 
the share taken in action by the somewhat bizarre 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 657 

Rough Riders made special appeal to the writers of 
the picturesque. For the rest Las Guasimas was a 
stout little skirmish in which, as was said at the time, 
"The colored troops fought nobly; and cowboys, 
dudes, and football players made good soldiers." 
Only 964 men were engaged but of these 16 were 
killed and 52 wounded. The Spaniards reported 9 
killed and 27 wounded. 

The army advanced again slowly and was soon 
confronted by the Spaniards, intrenched in force on 
two neighboring hills, one known as San Juan, the 
other, capped with a massive stone block-house called 
El Caney. 

The surrounding country to within a few hundred 
yards of these posts was a typical Cuban jungle, the 
spaces between the great palms thickly matted with 
clinging thorny vines, the saw-edged palmetto and the 
needle-pointed Spanish bayonet. Immediately before 
the two forts extended a broad expanse of open hill- 
side, plentifully obstructed by fences of barbed wire, 
— a new defensive material which the Spaniards used 
freely in all their fortifications. Upon these open 
spaces, swept by the fire from the trenches at the crest, 
the roads debouched from the forests, a single open- 
ing to each as clearly defined as a door in a stone-wall. 
Of course the Spaniards had well noted the range to 
each of these openings, and any body of troops com- 
ing out in a dense column would have a murderous fire 
to encounter. 

On the afternoon of June 30th there came to the 
commanding oflScers of the twelve thousand men en- 
camped along the sides of the road to San Juan, or- 
ders to move at four and take up positions in the 
woods before the enemy's lines, ready to attack at 
dawn. General Lawton was sent with his division to 
attack the Spaniards at El Caney, and by marching all 



658 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

night was ready to attack at six o'clock In the morning. 
With him was Capron's battery and Bates's brigade. 
As the fighting at this point began before that at San 
Juan, we may conveniently first consider It. 

A stone fort on the crest of a steep hill was In the 
centre of the Spanish position, and from It the " flag 
of gore and gold " floated defiantly. On either side 
yellow lines of fresh earth told of trenches filled with 
riflemen whose bullets were deadly at two miles' dis- 
tance. Beyond and north of the fort, and separated 
from It by another valley, was the village, built of 
stout stone and adobe houses, huddled together al- 
most as If Intended to take the form of a fortification. 
An old stone church with a high tower pierced for 
musketry stood in the town. The two valleys, that be- 
fore and the one behind the fort, were mainly open 
fields of grass waist high, broken here and there by 
groves of cocoanut and mango trees. The stronghold 
was defended by about a thousand Spaniards; esti- 
mates vary, and the stubbornness of the defence In- 
clined the men who charged up and down those slopes 
that midsummer day In the tropics to set a much larger 
figure, but this seems to be approximately correct. 

Early in the morning of July ist the guns of Cap- 
ron's battery began to thunder against the antiquated 
stone fort that crowned the hill. For some reason, 
however, the artillery proved Ineffectual. There 
were but four guns, and these, says Captain Arthur 
Lee, the British military attache, " were served with 
such deliberation, five and ten minutes elapsing be- 
tween successive rounds, that It was of little material 
assistance to the infantry attack." When the fort 
was finally carried by assault. It was found to be shat- 
tered indeed, but still tenable. 

The assault was made by the brigades of Chaffee 
and Ludlow, advancing gradually, now by swift rushes 




GENERAL WILLIAM R. SHATTER 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 659 

and again literally as Napoleon said an army moves, 
" on their bellies." The Spanish shooting was fast 
and accurate. At one point eight American sharp- 
shooters crept forward to take position on a little 
knoll. Five were hit in five minutes. The Spaniards 
had the advantage of us in smokeless powder and high- 
powered rifles. The attitude of the men and the tre- 
mendous penetrating power of the Mauser bullets led 
to some curious and shocking wounds, for the conical 
steel-clad bullets entering at the top of the body, as 
the victim stooped over, would range the whole length 
of the man's trunk, often passing down the leg to some 
distance. Sometimes striking a bone, these vicious 
projectiles would double on their course, describing al- 
most a circle within the body. It is worth noting, 
however, that the wounds inflicted by the Mausers, 
though seemingly more extensive than those caused 
by the larger-calibre and slower-speed bullets of earlier 
days, were less deadly. The channel was more 
cleanly cut, and the shock of the impact less. Men 
were sometimes seriously hit without knowing it until 
faint from loss of blood. Men shot in the stomach 
would complain that they had been kicked, perhaps by 
a comrade in the rank before them, and would be 
astonished to learn that a bullet had drilled them 
through and through. 

All the hot morning the battle raged. The Ameri- 
cans were making their way up the hill but with painful 
slowness and leaving many crumpled heaps of khaki 
to tell of death and wounds. At one o'clock an order 
came from General Shafter for Lawton to abandon 
the attack and join forces with General Wheeler, then 
attacking San Juan Hill. Lawton, not liking to ad- 
mit failure in his own attack, gave General Chaffee 
discretion to make one charge before retiring. Chaf- 
fee, tired of the slow tactics, was only too ready. The 



66o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

artillery briskened up, and its shells tore great rents 
in the stone fort as Captain Haskell's battalion of the 
Twelfth Infantry led the charge. It was not a spec- 
tacular charge. There were no long lines of cheering 
men in regular formation, with battle flags waving, as 
at Gettysburg for instance. Instead the spectator on 
the flank who from a position of comparative safety 
watched the advance saw a few men without formation 
advancing in groups slowly, while behind them some 
twenty paces followed a larger body of soldiers, who 
would run forward bent almost double for a few rods, 
then drop to the ground and crawl and wriggle on a bit, 
then rise and dash on again. A barbed-wire fence 
stopped the advance for a moment near the crest of 
the hill; but this was speedily cut, and the 
assailants dashed through the breaches. Then the 
Spaniards could be seen rising on the high ground be- 
hind their trenches and turning In flight. The fort 
had long been silent and its flag had been shot away, 
but soon the assailants were seen dancing In triumph 
about the fort, while a civilian, James Creelman, cor- 
respondent of the New York Journal, and first to 
reach the crest of the hill, waved the captured Spanish 
flag In triumph. 

Meanwhile at San Juan was raging a battle quite 
as fierce and nearly as bloody. Engaged on the 
American side were the dismounted cavalry regiments 
of infantry under General Kent. The men were half- 
starved and half-sick, for the wretched transportation 
service had left them destitute of rations, while the 
climate caused ills for the cure of which no medicines 
were available. But they were plucky and enthusias- 
tic and bore the test of fire bravely. 

San Juan was a typical Spanish stronghold. Along 
a ridge ran lines of earthworks connecting block- 
houses which stood on little peaks rising above the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 66i 

general crest of the hill. Before the trenches were 
entanglements of barbed-wire to catch and hold an 
assailant while the deadly Mausers from the heights 
beyond did their work. For some hundreds of yards 
the ground sloped away In front, largely denuded of 
trees and brush but covered with grass waist deep. 
The road from Siboney debouched on this clearing at 
a point in full command of the Spanish guns. To 
either side of the road extended heavy thickets, 
through which shells and Mauser bullets could Indeed 
make their way easily, but the passage for men was 
painful and slow. 

Two factors in the plan of attack were missing from 
the battle as fought. Lawton was expected to run 
over the little fort at El Caney early In the morning 
and join in the San Juan fight, but the Spaniards 
kept him busy too long for the latter duty. At Agua- 
dores, too, the Spaniards held Duffield in check un- 
expectedly and kept his troops out of the main battle. 
But at sunrise the attack was opened with a fierce 
artillery fire which, as our soldiers had no smokeless 
powder, drew the enemy's fire not on the battery 
alone but upon the Rough Riders and other commands 
stationed near by. For a long time the troops were 
halted under a heavy fire from the enemy, many of 
them being in the crowded road where a bullet or a 
shell did double execution. No wreath of smoke gave 
a hint of the position of any Spanish gun. A sharp- 
shooter might be perched in a tree within fifty yards 
of our lines, and if he kept his body hidden he could 
pick off our men in entire safety. It appeared that 
many of these sharpshooters had secured hiding-places 
In the rear of our troops, — a condition always galling 
and demoralizing to the men who suffer. 

There had been so little reconnoitring or skirmish- 
ing in the neighborhood that it is entirely probable an 



662 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

army advancing by night down a single narrow road 
might have left hundreds of concealed sharpshooters 
on its flanks and rear. 

Under the most advantageous circumstances the ad- 
vance of a large body of troops along a narrow road 
is but slow. On this scorching July day, when the sun 
seemed as pitiless as the bullets, the advance seemed to 
be at a snail's pace. Well disciplined as the men 
were, the dropping of a man checked for a brief mo- 
ment the advance of those behind him, and men were 
dropping fast. There was no stopping to care for 
the wounded. The utmost that could be done was to 
lay them to one side of the road, where they remained 
until the hospital stewards came along and painfully 
carried them to the shore of the little brook where the 
field hospital was established, — " Bloody Bend," the 
soldiers dubbed it. As the opening of the road into 
the fields before San Juan was approached, the men 
defiled through gaps in the fences into the woods on 
either side, where they spread out to right and left. 
They were invisible to the Spaniards there, but their 
position was well enough known, and the fire was piti- 
less. Every shot from an American rifle furnished the 
enemy with a target, and many a man on the field 
cursed the lack of prevision in the department at 
Washington which had left to the soldiers of a na- 
tion boasting itself the most progressive, the old-fash- 
ioned and dangerous black powder, while antiquated 
Spain — " poor old Spain," this Spain which we de- 
scribed as old fogy, " moss-backed," everything that 
expressed lack of progress and enterprise — had the 
best smokeless powder, the best rifles, and plenty of 
both. But we had some modern engines of war — or 
at least flattered ourselves we had. With the Rough 
Riders was an engine of destruction called the dyna- 
mite gun. Its name suggested terrifying possibilities, 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 663 

and its appearance, being unlike any form of artillery 
known to soldiers, stimulated the imagination of men. 
But its accomplishments were disappointing. In the 
hands of a body of picked men of unusual intelligence, 
enthusiasm, and energy, it still failed to perform any 
feats of carnage. It was too heavy to get into effec- 
tive position, its range was limited, and from some 
fault in construction it was continually getting choked 
and put out of action. There was also a balloon that 
was expected to be of inestimable service in reconnoi- 
tring. This was not a wholly new idea, as balloons 
were often employed during the Franco-Prussian war; 
but it may be said that our use of the balloon with 
Shafter's army was entirely novel. For on this day 
of hard shooting and heav^y loss, when our lines were 
within almost point-blank range of the enemy and en- 
joying only a little immunity from loss because the 
thickets hid them, the balloon was sent up some fifty 
yards immediately above a road packed with soldiers. 
Some of the enemy's marksmen intelligently reasoned 
that at the point where the controlling cord of the 
balloon touched the earth, there must be men, so they 
fired there with results profitable to them and dis- 
astrous to us. As an invitation to effective musketry 
that balloon has not been equalled in military history, 
and an eye-witness avers that when it had at last been 
happily disabled by a shot, the ofScer descending from it 
reported, as the sole fruit of his observations, that he 
had seen " men over on those hills firing upon our 
lines " — a fact already sufficiently established by the 
testimony of our dead and wounded. 

For hours the devoted soldiers stood in the road 
of death or lay firing ineffective volleys from the cover 
of the woods. It became plain to the rawest soldier 
in the ranks that to remain still under that fire meant 
obliteration. To retreat was not to be thought of. A 



664 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

trooper lying flat on his face in a row of his fellows 
put the feelings of all in a phrase when he grunted, 
" Boys, I have got to go one way or the other pretty 
damned quick." But there was only one way for 
American soldiers in the face of the enemy to go, and 
suddenly it appeared that all along the line this con- 
clusion was reached at the same moment, and all 
sprung forward in a desperate charge. 

By whom the advance was ordered is a matter not 
made clear by either the official reports or the accounts 
of observers on the field. It was seemingly much such 
a spontaneous act of all on the line as was the capture of 
Lookout Mountain by Grant's troops, not only with- 
out, but in defiance of, the general's orders. Inspec- 
tor-General Breckinridge in his report says only: 
" About one o'clock, after a delay of nearly two hours 
waiting for the troops to reach their positions, the 
whole force advanced, charged, and carried the ene- 
my's first line of intrenchments." General Wheeler, 
in his report, says: " It was evident that we were as 
much under fire in forming the line as we could be by 
an advance, and I therefore pressed the command 
forward from the covering under which it was 
formed." 

The matter is immaterial. However the order 
came, the men were ready and eager for it, and the 
hills were won by the men who carried guns. The 
charge was not spectacular. The troops advanced 
by rushes, one platoon running a few yards forward, 
then falling on its face while at its right another 
platoon would rise, dash beyond it and in turn sink 
to earth. The dismounted cavalry, Roosevelt's men, 
and the Tenth, or colored cavalry, who supported 
them on their left, went up almost as individuals; 
the colonels in the front, Roosevelt " yelling like an 
Indian " as one admirer telegraphed home, the men 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 665 

following, stooping low, sending a shot ahead when 
occasion offered, falling to earth when the enemy's 
fire grew too hot, and running when there seemed a 
chance to make a few yards. They fell fast, indeed, 
and the slope behind them was dotted thickly with 
writhing men or bodies strangely silent, but the ad- 
vance was uninterrupted. On the left could be seen 
General Hawkins going up at the head of his brigade 
of infantry, his erect stalwart figure and determined 
mien giving his white hair the lie. To his support 
went speedily the Third brigade under Colonel Wik- 
off, who fell ere the crest was reached. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Worth succeeded him in command, and 
quickly in death, too. So also of Colonel Liscum, 
the third in command. It was fierce fighting and 
deadly. A well-known correspondent of the day, 
Stephen Bonsai, told a picturesque story of the infan- 
try charge. 



In the very front strode a young lieutenant of the Sixteenth 
Infantry, and by him, shoulder to shoulder, up the slope marched 
the standard-bearer of the regiment proudly bearing a great flag, 
while on the other side marched a private and a flute-player, the 
latter a boy of sixteen who looked years younger. Near the crest 
the private fell. Lieutenant Ord turned in answer to a faint cry 
from him. The wound was clearly mortal, and the officer was about 
to turn away, when the soldier said painfully: "I'm done for, 
Lieutenant. But you had better take my steel nippers. There may 
be another wire fence beyond the hill, and I won't be there to cut 
it for you." The little musician struggled on with his commander, 
marched by him until in the hour of victory a Spanish prisoner 
whom he was about to help shot the young officer dead. And still 
the boy sat by the body. " I was going back," said the little flute- 
player, when asked how he, so weak and so useless, had joined in 
that fierce charge. " I wanted to go back to the hospital and look 
after Colonel Egbert when he fell wounded, and I was doing no 
good at the front, for my flute is ruined with the mud and rain. 
But just as I started I heard Mr. Ord say, ' Now, all the boys 
who's brave will follow me ; all the boys who's brave, follow me ; ' 
and then he rushed ahead, and kept that up about half an hour, 
resting a little while and then rushing ahead. And every time he 



666 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

started up he would shout back, ' Now, all the boys who's brave will 
follow me.' So all the boys followed him, and as I was lighter I 
got farther ahead than most." "Weren't you afraid, sonny?" asked 
an officer. " I was very fearful, sir, but I wasn't afraid." 

The ridge once carried, the assailants halted. There 
was talk of pursuit but the enemy had retired only to 
a second line of defence and their artillery was making 
the position the Americans had so hardly won equally 
hard to hold. For a time It even seemed that it would 
prove untenable. The rifle pits faced the wrong way 
for defence, and the block-houses were pierced for 
musketry on the side toward the American lines but 
blank toward the Spaniards. The men lay flat on 
the crest of the hill, panting with their exertion, and 
wondering what next. They could not rise to retreat; 
it would have been madness to go forward. A rush 
of Dillenback's battery to the crest of the hill gave 
promise of support, and the men cheered wildly, as 
the heavy guns came rumbling up the slope, the bright 
guidons flying, horses galloping, whips cracking, and 
all swung into position and let fly with a roar. But 
It was a brief diversion. In full view from the Span- 
ish trenches the artillerymen were easy targets for the 
Mausers, and they fell too fast for their fire to be 
effective. Limbering up again, the battery rushed 
back to the spot whence it had come. The Mauser 
rifle makes artillery useless at the old close range. It 
was mid-afternoon, and since dawn the men had had 
nothing to eat, nor was there anything now available, 
for no rations had come from the rear, the mule 
trains being busy hurrying ammunition to the front. 
Later In the day General Wheeler arrived among the 
rifle-pits which held the men of his cavalry division. 
He had risen from a bed of sickness to hasten to the 
sound of the firing, and now went up and down the 
lines speaking words of encouragement to the men, 



ii 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 667 

It was on this day that the wiry veteran of the Civil 
War delighted his men by climbing a tree, despite his 
sixty-odd years, and shouting from its top: "They're 
running! They're running! See the Yanks — no, no, 
I mean the Spaniards, run." When the guns were 
roaring, the memories of the days when he fought 
with Lee against the forces of the Union sometimes 
confused the gallant defender of the Stars and Stripes 
in Cuba, 

But while the men to whom the battle left strength 
and high spirits were working with pick and shovel, or 
dragging guns into new positions, or bringing up more 
ammunition, or foraging for food, there were sorry 
sights in the hospitals, and in the spots where the dead 
were brought for identification and burial. The day 
had been one of heavy losses. That ridge which now 
displayed the tattered flags of the victorious regiments 
had cost death. Of the infantry 12 officers and 77 
men were killed, 82 officers, and 463 men were 
wounded. Of the cavalry 6 officers and 40 men were 
slain, and 223 men wounded. 

With cartridge belts filled anew, the defenders of 
the hill crouched all day in the trenches, watchful for 
an assault and keeping up just enough of a response to 
compel the enemy to be cautious. Far away on the 
southwest the deep thunder of the navy's guns could 
be heard. The fleet was engaging the Socapa battery. 
In the harbor the hapless Cervera was getting ready 
to make his dash the next day, and at the rear of our 
lines General Shafter was considering whether a re- 
treat would be necessary. Shortly afterwards at El 
Poso a council of war was held to discuss the wisdom 
of withdrawing to a more protected position. Gen- 
eral Shafter had cabled to the United States that the 
enemy had been driven from his works, but that the 
American lines were so thin that he might be com- 



668 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

pelled to take a position farther to the rear. The 
situation was so abruptly changed the next day by the 
news of the destruction of Cervera that the general 
was bitterly condemned for his despatch and, even 
for considering a retreat at all. 

July 3d, General Shafter sent by a flag of truce into 
the lines of the Spanish a demand for the surrender of 
Santiago. " I have the honor to inform you," said 
the American commander in this communication, " un- 
less you surrender, I shall be compelled to shell San- 
tiago de Cuba. Please Instruct the citizens of all 
foreign countries, and all women and children, that 
they should leave the city before ten A.M. to-morrow." 
An audacious demand this, considering that it followed 
within a few hours a serious consideration on the part 
of the Americans whether they could hold the line 
they had won. Audacious, too, for the fact that, de- 
spite the threat of a bombardment, Shafter had really 
but few heavy siege-guns, and the bombardment by 
the navy had proved wholly ineffective. It is notice- 
able that in reporting the despatch of his demand for 
a surrender General Shafter says he informed all the 
division and brigade commanders of the fact. It may 
be presumed justly that the demand was made quite 
as much to restore the morale of the American troops 
as in any hope that it would be fruitful. But the flag 
of truce had been gone but two or three hours when 
along the lines passed suddenly a rumor that the 
Spanish fleet had gone to destruction, and Santiago's 
chief defence was demolished. The news came to 
General Shafter from Lawton's lines, and was hailed 
by our men as though it were the tidings of a victory, 
and when later In the evening the actual intelligence 
of Schley's glorious triumph arrived, there was pan- 
demonium on the lines. Men leaped to their feet and 
executed wild war-dances on the crest of the Spanish 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 669 

trenches in full view of the sulking Spaniards, for the 
truce was still on and no jealous sharpshooter could 
cut short the rejoicing of any. The bands played 
patriotic airs, and especially a musical-hall ditty which 
had come to be almost the official air of the army in 
Cuba, " There'll be a hot time in the old town to- 
night." Bonfires blazed, salutes were fired — most of 
them without the connivance of the commanding offi- 
cers, for there was still a likelihood that graver use 
might be found for all the available ammunition. 

Von Moltke and soldiers of the German school 
profess to regard war as an exact science into which 
•the element of luck should not enter. But in the mili- 
tary operations of the Spanish War there was very 
little science and a prodigious amount of luck on the 
American side. What might have been the result of 
the operations around Santiago had the fleet remained 
in the harbor and its sailors been added to the Spanish 
forces in the trenches is not pleasant to contemplate. 
Our troops were in no condition for a protracted 
siege, or to long resist any spirited and persistent at- 
tacks by the enemy. General Shafter's threat to bom- 
bard the city was largely bravado, for he had not the 
heavy artillery to produce much effect. His men were 
ill with tropical ailments and most menacing of all, 
yellow fever began to appear. Three thousand men 
were in the hospitals with wounds or disease. The 
medical service was contemptible. Men died for lack 
of medicines which were plentiful eighteen miles away. 
Five regiments of volunteers came as reenforcements. 
They were intelligently uniformed in garments fit for 
their homes in Illinois or Michigan in winter and 
ordered to service in Cuba in midsummer. The story 
is told that General Miles, arriving at Siboney, was 
startled to have a regiment of naked men turn out 
to salute him. Inquiring the reason for so remarkable 



670 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

a spectacle, he was informed that as it was the rainy 
season and the men possessed but one uniform each, 
they were accustomed to strip during the showers which 
were practically continuous. Notwithstanding all 
these elements of weakness in the American lines, the 
Spaniards determined not to fight and on July 18 the 
surrender of all the troops in Eastern Cuba was ef- 
fected. Not only Santiago and the troops there, but 
about twelve thousand men who had never been under 
fire were included in the capitulation. 

By this surrender a city of about 70,000 inhabitants 
in time of peace was won for the United States, — or 
rather for the Cubans, for whom the United States- 
took up arms, — with a territory contiguous and sur- 
rendered with it of 5,000 square miles. Nearly 
24,000 troops with their arms and accoutrements, 
saving those of the officers, were also delivered 
to the conquerors. Had our army been able 
to retire at that moment, the loss in proportion to the 
extent of the triumph would have been light. Exam- 
ination of the enemy's line of defence showed how wise 
had been the action of General Shafter in postponing 
from day to day an assault in hopes of the surrender 
which finally came. The Spaniards seemed to have 
a genius for devising defensive works. The whole 
territory before the American lines was cut with 
trenches and enmeshed with barbed wire extending in 
every imaginable direction. During the days of battle 
the defenders had given abundant evidence of their 
bravery in the trenches. They lacked that quality 
which impels soldiers to the assault, but in a defensive 
fight they won the admiration of their foes. Had the 
American army been compelled to take the city by 
assault, five thousand lives at least would have been 
the price paid. 

It is just to set down the fact that the Spaniards 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 671 

were still equipped for a vigorous and costly defence, 
for in the newspapers and in some of the books of 
military history published at the time, General Shafter 
was severely criticised for having waited so patiently 
for Toral to consult his home government. It was 
thought that for the American army to march into 
Santiago at any time after July 3 would have been a 
mere promenade. The fact is, it would have meant 
a battle bloodier than any fought in Cuba. 

Sharply upon this victory followed the most dis- 
creditable chapter in the history of our conduct of 
the Spanish War. The pestilential climate which had 
enabled the hardened Cubans to stand out for so many 
years against the fresh troops sent by Spain to sicken 
and die, was beginning to tell upon our men. The 
rainy season had set in, and that meant that the 
trenches in which the men had been sleeping and living 
since the beginning of the siege, were wet ditches, 
sodden and malarial. When the army embarked for 
Cuba, the most explicit scientific instructions were given 
to the soldiers for the preservation of their health 
against the ills of a tropical climate. They were to 
boil all water before drinking it, but they who offered 
the rule did not give the soldiers anything to boil the 
water in, nor suggest any way of building a fire where 
matches were scarcer than snowballs in Cuba, nor any 
method of keeping it going in constant rain without 
cover. So the men drank the water as they could 
find it, often from open brooks into which the offal 
of the camp drained; and as their rations were largely 
salted food, they drank a great deal. And the food! 
That was another subject upon which the prudent 
authorities on army hygiene had given explicit direc- 
tions. The men were to eat only wholesome things; 
but the commissary department some days left them 
with nothing at all to eat, and then supplied them 



672 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

with beef preserved in such a revolting way that the 
commanding general of the army referred to it as 
" embalmed beef." Vegetables bought for the army 
spoiled before they were delivered. Especially were 
the soldiers warned against the fruits of the country, 
but there were days when they could get nothing else. 
So, too, the caution against sleeping directly on the 
ground affected men little who were given no op- 
portunity to make floors for their tents, and who, 
furthermore, slept in wet trenches most of the time. 
As for the warning against wet clothes, it was met in 
many instances by wearing no clothes at all, — the only 
way it could be heeded. 

Under ordinary circumstances Santiago is subject to 
the epidemic diseases of the tropics. At the time of 
the siege it was in a particularly unhealthful condition, 
its streets filthy beyond description and the air bur- 
dened with disease. For days during the negotiations 
leading up to the surrender, refugees from the city 
passed through our lines, leaving infection behind 
them. In Siboney and along the route of the army 
were the huts and houses of Cubans in which case 
after case of fatal yellow fever had occurred. These 
pest-houses, instead of being burned down, were used 
as headquarters, offices, and even hospitals, and fre- 
quently visited by our soldiers. Apropos of this fact, 
the superior caution of the navy may be noted. When 
the marines were landed at Guantanamo, every house 
on the beach was burned with all its contents, and 
barrels of Spanish wine which were found there were 
spilled. All water was distilled, and every tent was 
floored. The navy commanders took no risks, and 
the marines stayed in camp in a region naturally as 
unhealthy as that about Santiago without one case of 
yellow fever in the thirty-five days of their occupation. 

But in the lines of the army the dread disease, and 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 673 

a virulent malarial fever akin to it, made their appear- 
ance even before Santiago fell. At that time the 
fever was making such headway in our ranks that 
had the Spaniards been well informed they might have 
held out with the certainty that a week's delay would 
put the army hors dii combat. As a matter of record, 
in less than one week after the surrender there were 
five thousand men in the Fifth corps ill with fever, and 
Colonel Roosevelt reported that of his hardy troops 
not more than one-fifth were fit for duty. Not all 
the sick men were in the hospitals, of course, but their 
illness was none the less grave because they tried to 
suppress it. The malady spread until at last the num- 
ber of new cases reported reached 850 in one day. 
Early in August eight general officers of the Fifth corps 
joined in a " round robin," in which they declared that 
illness had so enfeebled the army that it was without 
strength, that an epidemic of yellow fever was in sight 
which would surely destroy it, and that unless moved to 
the United States it must inevitably perish. 

The regiments at the front were ordered relieved 
as fast as transports could be sent to bring them home 
and the shipment of the Spanish prisoners made a 
reduction of the force at Santiago safe. To hasten 
the latter condition, regiments of immunes were sent 
to serve as a garrison for the city. According to 
General Shafter's published statement, the losses of the 
army — of 20,000 men — up to this time were, 
" 13 officers, 296 men, and 9 civilian employees died 
of disease; 24 officers and 226 men were killed, 83 
officers and 1,214 men were wounded, only 13 deaths 
resulting from wounds received in action." 

The complete inefficiency of the medical staff and 
the wanton violation of sanitary rules followed the 
unfortunate soldiers on transports and hospital ships 
and were continued in the camps at home where it 



674 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

might be thought the latest devices of sanitation would 
be installed. The story of this phase of our conduct 
of the Spanish War cannot be told in a chapter, hardly 
in a single book. It is the blackest record of incom- 
petence and inefficiency in all the story of our army 
and those who would read it in its details must be 
referred to the writings of the specialists on that 
subject. 

The very brief campaign under command of Gen- 
eral Nelson A. Miles, by which Porto Rico was re- 
duced to American authority has had but little atten- 
tion from military writers. This is perhaps because 
It was in a sense needless, for with Spain's fleets driven 
trom the seas, the Spanish armies in Cuba and in far- 
off Manila captured, Porto Rico, which was at best but 
lightly garrisoned, would have fallen under American 
control without any special endeavor. Indeed the 
campaign by which it was captured was almost blood- 
less from the American standpoint, a sort of holiday 
expedition for the troops engaged in it. Nevertheless 
as a campaign it was notable for the skill with which 
It was conducted, and the ease with which its object 
was attained was as much due to the military ability 
of Its commander. General Nelson A. Miles, as to the 
weakness of the Spanish resistance. Throughout the 
period of the war there was popular complaint that 
the political jealousy of President McKinley's ad- 
visers had caused the assignment of Shafter instead 
of Miles to the command of the Santiago expedition. 
General Miles had served long and creditably in the 
sharp wars with the Indians, which kept our little 
army busy during the decades following the Civil War 
He knew_ how to maintain an army in the field to 
care for its sanitation, to bring up his wagon trains, 
to get his wounded into places of safety. Of the 
practical art of war General Shafter proved himself 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 675 

to be singularly Ignorant, besides being handicapped 
by a physical unwieldliness that made him a sluggard 
in the field. There is no doubt that history will justly 
criticize the McKInley administration for having let 
political considerations Impel It to assign to the less 
competent commander the more difficult task In Cuba, 
while giving the veteran Miles, the ranking major- 
general in the army, the relatively unimportant enter- 
prise of subjugating Porto Rico. 

With about four thousand men Miles landed near 
Ponce, on the south side of the island, having care- 
fully notified the War Department of a different point 
of landing In the expectation that It would be made 
public. The precaution was characteristic of his 
methods throughout. His campaign was planned In 
advance as though he were going to encounter a foe 
of 100,000 men, ready to make desperate resistance. 
As a result everything moved like clockwork. His 
army advanced by four roads, taking one after the 
other the strategic points of the enemy. The cam- 
paign was ended by the news of peace, else it would 
have proceeded placidly to the ultimate Spanish defeat. 
As it was the American loss was only three killed and 
forty wounded. 

The end came in dramatic form to a battery just 
going into action at Guayama. The guns were shotted 
and aimed, the gunner of one stood with lanyard in 
hand awaiting the order to fire. There was a sound 
of a galloping horse on the road to the rear and an 
officer came Into view shouting, and waving a paper. 
"Cease firing! Cease firing!" he cried, as he came 
within earshot. " What for? " Inquired the artillerist 
with natural curiosity. " Peace has been declared," 
was the response, whereat the men of that command 
who had never yet seen their guns in action stamped 
their feet and swore vigorously. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

Dewey's Capture of Manila— Aguinaldo and the Insurrectors— Cost 
of the Philippines— The Army in Peace. 

Whatever else it may be — and it is almost every- 
thing that is bad— war is a great educator. When 
our war with Spain broke out comparatively few amc^r- 
the American people knew anything whatsoever abc ,t 
the Philippine Islands, and virtually nobody outside 
of governmental circles thought that in these far-off 
Asiatic isles would be fought the first naval battle of 
the war, and that ultimately the whole of that archi- 
pelago with its historic capital, Manila, would be made 
part of the domain of the United States. The Federal 
authorities, however, had not been indifferent to the 
existence of this great Spanish possession in the Far 
East, and Admiral Dewey, with an American fleet, 
lay all ready for action in the harbor of Hong Kong 
when the despatch came to him from Washington an- 
nouncing the declaration of war, and ordering him 
to proceed to Manila, and capture or destroy the 
Spanish fleet there. How expeditiously and effectively 
he obeyed this order is fully told in the compamon 
volume to this—" The Story of Our Navy for Young 
Americans." Enough here to note that April 30> 
1898, Dewey, on his flagship, " Olympia, led his fleet 
into Manila Bay, past the battery of Cavite, past the 
fields of mines miraculously escaping injury, and atter 
a three hours' battle sunk three of the Spamsh men- 
of-war, and two torpedo boats, burned seven other 
cruisers, killed 167 men, and wounded 214, with a 
total loss to his own squadron of seven men slightly 

676 





GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 



F"" 




FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 677 

injured. Spanish naval power in the Pacific was ob- 
literated. 

In complete possession of Manila Bay, with the 
Spanish fleet destroyed and the fortifications silenced, 
Dewey found himself at once the master and the vic- 
tim of the situation. The Spanish flag still floated 
over the ancient city. The Admiral might have com- 
pelled its surrender by threats of bombardment, but 
without troops he could not occupy or hold it. But 
not for three weeks after the battle of Manila Bay 
did the supporting force of soldiers sail from San 
Francisco. The voyage occupied more than a month 
so that for two months the Admiral was left with a 
hostile city still under Spanish control under his guns, 
a force of undisciplined native insurgents ravaging 
the country-side and claiming to be the accepted allies 
of the " Americanos," and the warships of several 
European nations, some openly sympathetic with 
Spain, anchored in the Bay and waiting watchfully 
for some act on his part that would furnish them an 
excuse to intervene. Months afterward, when Manila 
was occupied by American troops and all foreign peril 
was averted. Admiral Dewey looked reflectively down 
upon the wrecks of the Spanish ships he had destroyed 
and said to a friend, " That was the least of my 
troubles — those ships down there." 

The story of the navy in the Philippines I have told 
in " The Story of Our Navy." What the army did 
there is a longer tale and indeed is not yet to be fully 
told, for even at the date of this book a great part 
of the military force of the United States is stationed 
in those distant isles guarding against outbreaks of 
the revolutionary spirit which there is ever smoulder- 
ing. But its activities began with the sailing from 
San Francisco of some six thousand men, mostly vol- 
unteers from Oregon and California, with a portion 



678 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

of the Fourteenth United States infantry, all under 
command of Brigadier-General Thomas M. Anderson. 
Other detachments followed rapidly and when Gen- 
eral Wesley A. Merritt, who had been given command 
of the forces in the Philippines, reached Manila he had 
about 8,500 available men in his command. The 
military situation which he found confronting him was 
puzzling. 

In Manila were supposed to be about twelve thou- 
sand armed men. The city was beginning to suffer 
for both food and water, as supplies of each had been 
interrupted by the insurgents, who had completely 
hemmed in the town. The American forces — other 
than the navy — then on the ground numbered about 
six thousand, and occupied the ground along the bay 
shore from Cavite toward Manila. The insurgents, 
as first on the ground, were in possession of the most 
advantageous positions for an attack on the Spanish 
lines, and completely shut off the American troops 
from the city. There had been no fighting except 
between the insurgents and the Spaniards, for the 
enemy had carefully refrained from giving the Admiral 
any cause to fulfil his threat of bombarding the town 
if the American ships or lines were fired upon. 

The position of the United States commands, afloat 
and ashore, with reference to the insurgents was a 
puzzling one. At the outbreak, of hostilities insurgent 
activity had naturally been encouraged by the United 
States, and Admiral Dewey had even sent a ship to 
bring Aguinaldo, a native leader, back to the islands 
from Hong Kong where he was in exile, and had fur- 
nished him with arms and assistance in organizing the 
native forces. But after the destruction of the Span- 
ish fleet he had made such progress in arming and 
organizing the natives that in a series of engagements 
around Manila the Spaniards were worsted, losing 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 679 

heavily and being driven into the lines immediately 
surrounding the city. Aguinaldo captured 1,800 
prisoners and an immense store of arms, including two 
batteries of artillery. By the last of May the exultant 
insurgents were within seven miles of the city, which 
their lines completely encircled, and their prisoners 
numbered almost three thousand. Then the first 
damper was put upon their enthusiasm by Admiral 
Dewey himself. Fearing that if the city should be 
taken by the insurgents, there would result a sack and 
massacre which would compel the intervention of the 
other armed forces in the harbor, he sent word to 
Aguinaldo that the advance must be stopped. Between 
the Filipino front and the town lay the Malolele River. 
This stream they were forbidden to cross. " If you 
do," said Dewey, " I will send the ' Petrel ' into the 
stream to bombard your lines and to shoot down your 
men." The order was for the time obeyed, but natu- 
rally it created great bitterness. But even thus 
checked, Aguinaldo kept up an active warfare, most 
harassing to the Spaniards, and resulting in greatly 
increasing his store of captives, whom he treated well 
and held for ransom. The Spanish governor. Gen- 
eral Augustin, was at his wits' end. In the harbor 
was a fleet of American warships holding the city at 
their mercy. On the hills and in the forests com- 
petely surrounding the town were nearly thirty thou- 
sand natives, desperate with the memory of centuries 
of wrong and drunken with the sense of victory within 
their grasp. There was no communication with the 
interior, — no hope of help from either sea or shore, 
nor any chance, however desperate, of escape. The 
water supply was stopped by the insurgents. Food 
shipments were stopped. The despatches sent to 
Madrid by General Augustin tell how fatal he felt his 
position to be, and show incidentally how considerable 



68o STORY OF OUR ARMY 

an ally the Americans had in the strong insurrection- 
ary leader, Aguinaldo. 

Even thus early the military authorities showed de- 
termination not to turn back the Philippines to their 
own people after the expulsion of the Spaniards, and 
most of the activity of the army in the islands for the 
years succeeding the Spanish War was in furtherance 
of this purpose. 

Before making any attack upon Manila, General 
Merritt thought it desirable to get the insurgents — 
eager for the reward of their own campaign — out of 
the way by diplomacy, if possible, for Aguinaldo was 
quite aware of his own strength and somewhat resent- 
ful of his injuries, real or fancied. However, he 
yielded to the American representations that his 
trenches would be more useful if manned by the 
Americans with their heavier artillery, and withdrew 
his men. 

For many days thereafter Manila lay wholly at the 
mercy of the American forces. The attack upon it 
was deferred at Admiral Dewey's request until the ar- 
rival of the monitor " Monterey " from California, but 
the intervening time was occupied in preparations for 
the assault that made its outcome all the more certain. 
Doubtless these preparations served to convince the 
Spanish governor-general of the hopelessness of his 
case, for just before the final day set for the assault 
he notified Dewey that the city would be surrendered 
as soon as there had been enough of an attack and 
a defence to satisfy " Spanish honor," and incidentally, 
to save the commander from a court-martial when he 
reached home. No hint of this arrangement appears 
in General Merritt's report, but it is generally believed 
that it was made. However, the Spanish side of it 
was not fully carried out. Fort San Antonio made 
a stubborn resistance to the land attack of the Ameri- 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 68i 

cans. It was assaulted by a column of Colorado 
troops, who marched upon It, up the beach, In water 
up to their waists much of the time, cheering and with 
a band plodding in their rear playing the novel battle 
song, " There'll be a hot time, In the old town 
to-night." 

This was the First Colorado infantry, sent forward 
under orders from General Merritt of the night before 
to make a feint, or. If the Spaniards showed resistance, 
a real attack. Either because the understanding be- 
tween the governor-general and the American com- 
manders had not been communicated to the men in 
the fort, or because the Spanish officers were unable 
to control their men, a vigorous fire was opened on 
this column, but without checking its advance In the 
least. The Coloradans pressed on, throwing them- 
selves flat to rest when they came to a piece of dry 
beach, and wading stubbornly through the surf that 
at points covered their sandy pathway. Now and 
then a man fell, but not many, for the Spanish aim 
was bad, and apparently only a part of the Spanish 
forces were firing. A small stream In front of the 
fort was promptly forded, and soon the watchers In 
the ships could see the Spaniards streaming out of the 
back of the fort, while the Colorado men with loud 
cheers rushed up and over the front. Almost In- 
stantly the Spanish flag came fluttering down, and a 
great American flag was run up to the top of the staff 
and saluted with cheers from the ships and the trenches. 

On the right of the American line, out of sight of 
the ships and with little aid from their guns, the as- 
sailants were meeting a more serious resistance. 
There General McArthur's brigade was engaged. 
Massed in trenches, behind stone houses, and taking 
advantage of everything that offered protection, these 
troops waited until they saw the flag come down from 



682 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

Fort San Antonio. Then the guns of the Astor bat- 
tery and a Utah volunteer battery were turned on 
the most formidable work in their front — a stone 
block-house — and quickly riddled it, after which the 
troops charged the Spanish lines and soon carried 
them. The Spaniards retreated before the advancing 
Americans, who did not stop in the captured trenches, 
but pressed on toward the city, sustaining meanwhile 
a heavy fire from the woods that bordered the road 
and from every farm-house or other covert they en- 
countered. By the time the Spaniards had been driven 
from every halting-place the brigade had lost 7 men 
killed and 37 wounded. 

IMeanwhile the Colorado men with the First Cali- 
fornia and part of the Twenty-third regulars had 
left Fort Antonio behind, and were pushing into the 
suburb of Malate, where they met a heavy fire from 
house windows and roofs. The situation was then a 
most anomalous one. In pursuance of the agreement 
with Admiral Dewey, the Spaniards had displayed a 
white flag on the corner of the wall of the old town, 
but directly under this flag the Spanish soldiers were 
continuing the fight, and the American troops were 
responding with heavy volleys. The navy had ceased 
firing, and at this very moment officers representing 
Admiral Dewey and General Merritt were on their 
way to the city hall to meet, by prearrangement, the 
Spanish officials and formulate the terms of capitula- 
tion; yet there was fighting In the streets of Malate, 
and large bodies of Spanish troops were standing ir- 
resolute, with arms In their hands, uncertain whether 
to reopen the conflict or not. The insurgents, who 
had not been much in evidence during the day, as the 
fighting was not on their lines, now began to crowd 
toward the breach in the Spanish position, and an- 
nounced their intention of entering the city with the 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 683 

victors, — a purpose which General Merritt promptly 
interdicted, instructing his brigade commanders to 
keep them out at any cost. By night, however, these 
complications were all untangled. The Spaniards 
everywhere were informed of the surrender, the last 
Spanish flag in the city was hauled down, American 
troops garrisoned every fort, and patrolled all the 
principal streets of the city, and the insurgents, nurs- 
ing a not unjustifiable resentment, were left in their 
trenches, confronting not only there the Spaniards, but 
their friends the Americans. The sufl^cient justifica- 
tion for the restraint put upon the insurgents is the 
fact that, had they been admitted to the city before 
the American authority was complete and arrange- 
ments for the protection of life and property per- 
fected, they would beyond a shadow of a doubt have 
sacked and looted the town. 

The capture of Manila is almost unprecedented in 
the history of warfare, for the great value of the 
prize and the small expenditure of human life in the 
winning of it. A city of 300,000 inhabitants, heavily 
fortified, was taken with a loss of twenty killed and 
105 wounded, after a leisurely campaign covering 
twenty-four days. On the American side, exclusive 
of the navy, scarce 9,000 men had been engaged, and 
they had taken 13,000 prisoners. Of arms and muni- 
tions of war there were captured 22,000 small arms, 
10,000,000 rounds of ammunition, about 70 pieces of 
modern artillery, and several hundred antiquated 
bronze pieces. In the vaults of the city was about 
$900,000, — fair spoil of war. Nor was the extent 
of the triumph the greatest of the American achieve- 
ments at Manila. Almost instantly conditions of peace 
were restored in the city. The strong hand of author- 
ity restrained alike the eager insurgents and the sullen 
Spanish soldiery. The custom-house was reopened. 



684 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

and shops took down their shutters. After the first 
moment of terror the inhabitants discovered that while 
the American occupation meant martial law it meant 
also protection to every man in the pursuit of his busi- 
ness. General Greene, who was most active in this 
work, writes : 

Within one week from the time the articles of capitulation were 
signed every branch of the government except civil courts was in 
operation. The police stations were open, and American soldiers 
were on duty as patrolmen. Police court was held every morning, 
and petty oflfenders were tried, and either acquitted, or convicted, 
sentenced, and sent to jail. The streets were being cleaned; the 
prisoners of war were quartered and fed; public property was 
inventoried and counted; public funds were secured and placed in 
the custody of officers under bonds ; the custom-house was doing 
a large business ; the streets were lighted ; water was delivered 
through the pipes ; the markets were open, and food in ample 
quantity was coming in from the country on one side and by sea 
on the other. . . . The day we entered the city all shops and 
buildings were closed, and they remained so the following day, 
which was Sunday. But on Monday a few venturesome shop- 
keepers threw open their doors, and finding that they were fully 
protected, the others followed their example on Tuesday. That 
afternoon the newspapers made their appearance, and the tram- 
ways resumed operations. On Wednesday morning the banks 
opened their doors, under a guard of soldiers to preserve order, 
which, however, was withdrawn two days later as being no longer 
necessary. 

A curious fact about the capture and occupation of 
the city by the American troops is that it took place 
after the peace protocol had been formally concluded 
at Washington, resembling therein the famous victory 
of New Orleans, which was won by General Jackson 
several days after the signing of the treaty of Ghent 
which concluded the War of 1812. Had the cable to 
Hong Kong been intact, it is doubtful whether Manila 
would ever have been taken, for it would have been 
the duty of the authorities at Washington to notify 
the forces in the Philippines immediately of the end 




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FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 685 

of the war. There would have been a sorry time for 
the soldiers and sailors who had been working and 
waiting so patiently to put the finishing touch upon 
Dewey's victory of May i, and the map of the world 
might have escaped a radical change. Certainly the 
United States would in that event have been freed 
from grave problems and heavy responsibilities which 
have come to them as the result of their new posses- 
sions in the Philippines. 

General Merritt's refusal to permit Aguinaldo's 
troops to enter Manila caused immediate resentment 
among the Filipinos which had far-reaching effects. 
The resentment was natural for the natives had ren- 
dered material service in keeping the Spaniards cooped 
up in the city, and had every reason to believe them- 
selves the recognized allies of the United States forces. 
On the other hand, General Merritt's order was un- 
questionably wise, for the Filipinos were too little ac- 
customed to the restraints of civilized warfare to be 
trusted with a captured city. The disorder, rapine, 
and loot in such a case would have thrown endless dis- 
credit upon the United States. Unhappily from this 
incident gradually grew an estrangement between the 
American and the native forces, which gradually took 
on the form of organized war. As the treaty of 
Portsmouth, by which the war with Spain was ended, 
ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States, the 
natives took on the status of rebels and the campaign 
for their subjugation was pressed with vigor for years 
under General Merritt and his successor, General E. 
S. Otis. The warfare waged by the insurrectos was 
in the main a guerrilla war, into the details of which 
it would be unprofitable to go. But the task of sub- 
duing it was costly in men and money. At one time 
the United States had as many as sixty thousand men 
in the field, and the losses in battle and from diseases 



686 STORY OF OUR ARMY 

peculiar to the islands were heavy. In 1909 a civil 
government was set up to take the place of the military 
government which had thus far ruled the Islands, and 
the report of the commanding general showed the 
number of Americans killed in battle as 883 — or more 
than fell in the whole war with Spain. When by a 
clever subterfuge Captain Funston, later a brigadier- 
general, captured Aguinaldo, the vitality of the in- 
surrection was dissipated. Thereafter the insurrectos 
had no shadow of a central government and were in 
fact merely bands of guerrillas fighting without defi- 
nite plan or policy. By 1910 the insurrection may be 
said to have been stamped out, but it was at the date 
of this book still necessary to maintain in the Philip- 
pines an army of twelve thousand men, at a cost of 
$12,000,000 annually to keep the peace so hardly won. 

Indeed the Philippines can hardly be looked upon 
as an inexpensive prize. We paid Spain $20,000,000 
for them and up to 19 12 it is reasonably estimated 
they had cost us about $300,000,000 more. But they 
kept vitality in the army, giving its younger ofl^cers 
some service in the field, and in the end that may prove 
to be worth the outlay. 

With the suppression of the Filipino insurrection 
the army settled down to the avocations of peace. 
Its officers were engaged in the supervision of many 
works of public importance, most notable among these 
being the Panama Canal, the closing years of the con- 
struction of which were wholly under the supervision 
of army engineers, headed by Colonel George W. 
Goethals. A new department of military activity 
also arose in the aviation corps, a service which proved 
to be one of peril even in time of peace for in the five 
years of its existence, up to 19 14, no less than fifteen 
army " airmen " were killed. Americans proud of 
their army will, however, deplore the policy which 



FOR YOUNG AMERICANS 687 

kept our appropriations for aviation purposes down 
to $125,000 in 1 9 13, while PVance appropriated 
$7,400,000, and Germany and Russia $5,000,000 
each. Our total expenditures for military av'iation to 
that date were $255,000. 

A law passed February 2, 1901, limits the total num- 
ber of men in the regular army to 100,000. Under 
this limit the President may maintain it at such strength 
as he sees fit, and at the time of the publication of this 
book (19 14) the actual strength of the army was 
4,673 officers and 84,810 enlisted men, besides 5,900 
Philippine scouts enlisted from the natives and em- 
ployed as a sort of constabulary. Of this force about 
25,000 were stationed in our foreign possessions — the 
Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Canal Zone, 
and guarding the legation in China. 

I do not think anyone can read this Story of Our 
Army without seeing that the neglect and even hostil- 
ity to which that organization has been condemned in 
time of peace has gravely affected its usefulness in time 
of war. However wise and salutary has been the 
dread of standing armies, impressed upon us by our 
forefathers, it may be carried to an extreme. What 
might have been a military menace to a nation of 
15,000,000 people is an insufficient police force for 
90,000,000. And an army which might be an engine 
of oppression under orders of a king is nothing more 
than a weapon of self-defence when commanded by a 
President elected by the votes of the people. Not in 
any sense a warlike people, we have had to fight about 
once every quarter century of our national existence. 
In each case the emergency found us unprepared. The 
lessons of history are idle, if they do not teach us now 
the need of both an army and a navy thoroughly ade- 
quate to national defence. 




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